Penny Hero (dot) Net

Chris, aka , just sent me a link to this flash video of the hottest piece of technology I’ve ever seen.

It’s a demo video of this touch screen interface. The video starts out with the guy manipulating colored lights and shapes, obviously in order to demo what this thing is capable of as far as graphics, response-time, and manipulatability (is that a word?). It goes on to show possible other uses for it, like for manipulating images, navigating 2d and 3d maps, manipulating 3d-rendered objects, and GAMES!!

Anyway, go look. It’s pure sex on an LCD screen (or whatever this thing is made of).

Anyway, here’s a link to more technical info about it.

A friend of mine just sent me a link to this flash video of the hottest piece of technology I’ve ever seen.

It’s a demo video of this touch screen interface. The video starts out with the guy manipulating colored lights and shapes, obviously in order to demo what this thing is capable of as far as graphics, response-time, and manipulatability (is that a word?). It goes on to show possible other uses for it, like for manipulating images, navigating 2d and 3d maps, manipulating 3d-rendered objects, and GAMES!!

Anyway, go look. It’s pure sex on an LCD screen (or whatever this thing is made of).

Anyway, here’s a link to more technical info about it.

I’m currently using bittorrent to (illegally?) download an audio book reading of Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense”.

How’s that for technology intersecting with the English major?

I don’t even like American Revolutionary texts… but I saw it in my search results, and it had more than zero seeds, so… the English major in me had no choice but to download it.

I’m not exactly sure why I’m so tickled by this.

Paul armstrong says: power and justice are incompatible (page 5 on my preview)

possible that *shock* the two women characters are the only two heroic/incorruptable characters because they are inherently powerless, and transparent conduits through which male power travels… until the death of the two men in antonia’s life.

antonia as a female politician essay.

Among other things, I had a dream that I was explaining how awesome some new processor was to my mom. I explained that the old processor was “this big” and held my hands a few inches apart, and said that it could do “a whole bunch of calculations.” Then I moved my fingers about an inch apart and said that the new processor could do the same amount of work, but it was only this small. “Plus” I said, “the entire surface of the chip is in contact with the heat-sink, so it’s super cool.”

Bizzare dream… bizzare that I remember it so vividly, including what the smell of the heat-sink glue was like and the color of it. I had visions of electricity flowing slopily through the old processor and this impression that the new on was so efficient that I wasn’t able to psychically sense electricity at all.

I need to be the first to blog about this, damnit. because I’m that much of a nerd. However…

“I don’t think I’ve ever impressed a girl with my yo-yoing skills,” Polvi said

That’s complete bull, and he knows it.

Polvi, you should be proud to be a nerd. It’s never going to change. You’re a gentoo buff, you wear nifty geek shirts. you work for mozilla. Yoyo-ing isn’t going to make you any more of a nerd than you already are, silly. You should celebrate that.

Ok, I’m fired for still not reading my book.

btw, polvi’s blog is here, and the link to the news article is here in case you don’t know how to click on the link in the subject of this post.

There’s a somber dinner-party, and Senor don Vincente Ribiera, Dictator of Costaguana goes, as does Captain Mitchell, Mrs Gould and husband Don Carlos, administrator of San Tome silver mine.

the head of the chairman of the railway board (from lond) is complaining about the train and car trip over. and talks with Mrs Gould about the town’s old distant past, how boring it is now (except for the pesky revolutions) and says that he’d help put Sulaco in touch with more greatness. The chairman helped negotiate the business of Don Vincente’s government in order to grab some land for the railway, but Sulaco’s natural barriers and surprisingly the resistance of the aristocratic residents make it hard. He gets the dictator to come to Sulaco with him and a General Montero (silver mine associate, minister of war) to come.

The railway guy (sr jon?) stops at the high point of the future railroad and meets his chief engineer and talk about moving the line away from the snobby land owners. They say don carlos can help them. he’s a bad ass.

Here, they disturb someone resting… an Indian that was “lent” to the railway peeps by the OSN… Nostromo.

I think I’m going to die of shock. Here’s a Bush-push that I think I actually could get behind. I’m suspicious that I don’t know enough about what’s going on in politics, or what this really means under the go getem! rhetoric… but maybe there’s hope?

Seems some things are changing since whatever those meetings were just before the state of the union address. Now he’s pro-education, pro-research, pro-energy-inovation. Anti-oil addiction! hahaha.

I’m treading softly… but this was my favorite quote from the article I’m linking to:

“With freewheeling folksiness, Bush joked that he himself could use a tutor in math. And, in a reference to his reputation for mangling the spoken word, English as well.

“A lot of people probably think math and science isn’t meant for me – you know, it seems a little hard, algebra,” Bush said to laughter from his invitation-only crowd at Intel. “I understand that, frankly.” (link)

It seems that the friend of mine (can’t remember who) who said that Bush’s bushisms and language fuck ups are all part of the image his PR people designed for him was maybe right.

I still don’t have to like him though. And I’m waiting for someone to reply to this post and enlighten me more on the context of this so I don’t start thinking he’s not such a bad guy.

I understand that his motivations for this kind of campaign are economic. He doesn’t want the US economy to take a nose-dive when these kids he’s been neglecting get out of college. But I really really wish that he was making education a (rhetorical) priority for the sake of education.

Now, let’s see if he reverses those fucking Financial Aid cuts.

I’m trying to read and understand Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo. I’m having a hell of a time. BUT, I think if I write about what I do know, it might help me understand.

Chapter 1: The town’s name is Sulaco in the Republic of Costaguana in the cape of Punta Mala. There’s a legend about some Americanos who went off searching for treasure and never came back. it’s thought that their ghosts are trapped guarding the treasure.

Chapter 2: The Oceanic Steam Navigation Company (O.S.N) characterized as “violating the sanctuary of peace sheltering the calm existence of Sulaco,” and also like western pantheistic gods… good reputation for business etc.

Captain Joseph Mitchell aka “senor Mitchell, or “Fussy Joe” — captain on this end with “Smith” on the other end. He was called on to save the life of the dictator Senor Ribiera after losing a battle of Socorro.

Nostromo, who was working on the National Central Railway (he was imported) helped out and saved Captain Mitchell and Ribiera from the mob.

Chapter 3: Old Giorgio Viola, a “Garibaldino’ and his family hide out from a mob attack (same mob attack?). Nostromo has the reputation of saving people like them, and Giorgio was the one who convinced Nostromo to seek work here in the first place. Mrs Teresa Viola, two daughters Linda and Giselle. The staff of the Casa Viola mostly hide in the plains. The family hides, and just before the chapter break, someone bangs on the shutters and they can hear a horse.

Chapter 4: It’s nostromo outside with his horse. He stops briefly, then goes with a crowd away. “Avanti”… we learn Giorgio is a bad cook, and that he was part of the revolutionary struggle that preceeded this current “counter revolution”. We learn that Georgio had a son before who died, and would be the same age as Nostromo if he had lived. We learn Giorgio believes in god but doesn’t like church/religion. We learn more aboug Giorgio’s ideals: doesn’t like elitism/aristocracy/nobility. “too many kings emporers had flourished …god meant for the poeople”. he also feels alienated from fellow italians who he knows don’t care about the “wrongs of down-trodden nations” He has “old lion” imagery/qualities. he tells stories in his cafe about the ideals and wars he was in.

We learn Giorgio is a good cook and cooked for the general in european capaigns. he fought for the americans too under garbaldi.

We are reminded several times that the “mob” or everyone lower in Sulaco suspects Giorgio of having a hidden hoard in his kitchen.