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X-log
 Friday, April 4, 2003
Drivel: I will be restructuring my weblog in the coming weeks and splitting it into two different weblogs; one personal and one professional. My personal weblog will cover anything that I fancy. My professional weblog will cover topics of systems engineering, storage, and content management. It will also be my professional diary of my business and consulting tips and tricks. I will also be managing my main web site. I will attempt to manage all three of these using a single installation of Radio -- Murphy willing, of course. This will officially launch my company. What's the name of my company, you ask? You will have to wait and see. Just let me say it will be explosive. 1:54:02 AM 
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Drivel: I just finished reading William Gibson's All Tomorrow's Parties, which is a freakish view of the convergence of distributed communications and nanotechnology. The book read like it was written for TV or perhaps to become a movie. This is a stark contrast to Idoru, which I also recently finished reading. All Tomorrow's Parties wondered a little too much for my tastes and didn't get to the point or evolve the primary subject of nanotechnology until the very end. The imagery was too flashy and too vague at the same time. This said, the concept of combining robust communication with nanotechnology is quite intriguing, and very scary, as Mr. Gibson has illustrated for us with the "faxing" of a human being.
The technologies that he outlined in Idoru have been carried over and evolved. His notion of real-time, fully engaged, "net" communication are fascinating and are very close to being realized with the evolution of 3D modeling, streaming, and maturation of Virtual Reality technologies. He has set the bar very high in terms of the ability of disparate devices being able to communicate globally with little difficulty. The user interfaces that he describes being employed on these devices use input from all sensory sources. To my knowledge, nothing like these user interfaces exists today. This is not to say that the different components don't exist in nascent forms. I think a lot of investments will be made in creating these types of user interfaces over the next twenty years. What Gibson describes as a web site is a completely immersive communications experience; a far cry from today's web sites.
The final premise of the book is that nanotechnology will be able to replicate human beings. There is far too much unknown about the human brain to be able to even surmise that this would be possible. In order to replicate human beings, you would have to also replicate their memory and this means replicating at the sub-atomic levels. This is a high aspiration, but I doubt if I will see it in my lifetime.
All in all, All Tomorrow's Parties fell short of my expectations after reading Idoru. However, this does not deter me from reading more works by Gibson as I read his work as much for technological and philosophical insight as I do entertainment. 1:52:24 AM
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Drivel: I downloaded and installed MySQL server for OS X last night. It was a breeze to install and configure. I did find one glitch in the documentation. The documentation for setting the path variable was incorrect. The readme stated:
echo 'setenv PATH $PATH:/usr/local/mysql/bin' >> ~/.tcshrc
It should have been:
echo 'setenv PATH .:/usr/local/mysql/bin' >> ~/.tcshrc
Other than this, the installation was great. I am on my way to getting my AMP (Apache MySQL PHP) platform running on my TiPB. 1:48:25 AM
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Drivel: My new Palm Tungsten T is working out quite well with the ultra-thin keyboard. I am writing this post on it in Word To Go and will transfer it to my laptop for posting as soon as I get to my hotel room tonight. Using the Tungsten T is highly productive primarily because of Docs To Go, which provides Word and Excel support on the Palm. Additionally the battery lasts for about eight hours while working on it, which makes it great for cross country flights. I am going install an MP3 player on it this weekend and see how long the battery lasts while working and playing MP3s on my flight back to Boston on Monday. 1:47:40 AM
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Drivel: While passing through Denver International Airport last week I discovered that AT&T Wireless has launched their Wi-Fi service that competes with T-Mobile's Hotspot service. The difference between the two is that AT&T's service is session based rather than subscription based like T-Mobile's. This model fits extremely well with where they are offering the services, which is mainly hotels and throughout airports. For $9.95 you can sit are your gate during a layover and actually get work done. The service is available in Denver, Seattle, Atlanta, Dallas, and Houston airports right now. I can really see this service taking off as soon as they start hitting other major airports like ORD, LGA, and LAX, which also happen to be my main transit points. I am a subscriber to T-Mobile's Hotspot service and will use AT&T's service as well. 1:46:56 AM
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© Copyright 2003 Dann Sheridan 
Last update: 7/1/03; 7:44:21 AM.
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