Hercules June 19, 2008
Posted by townsend51 in aerospace, hercules.add a comment
A simply awesome photograph.
In Praise of the Internet Archive June 19, 2008
Posted by townsend51 in blogging, creative commons, flickr, internet archive, scribd.add a comment
1. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons
2. Attribution-NonCommercial Creative Commons
3. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Creative Commons
4. Attribution Creative Commons
5. Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons
6. Attribution-NoDerivs Creative Commons
I generally issue my own work under the second license. This is largely because I’m an amateur writer, and seeming as I don’t rely on it to make a living, I’m happy for people to share it as freely as they like. But what if my work was to receive a sudden surge in popularity (bear with me!)? Then I’d be more inclined to protect my work, and perhaps I’d change the license. All services I have encountered allow users to do this. But this is quite problematic. What if somebody else has used my work in a way that they considered fair use? When the license change takes effect, they are in a grey area. I’m sure that if you could prove that the source work originally allowed derivatives then you’d be OK. But this is only possible by winding back the clock. Fortunately, this is what the Internet Archive allows you to do. Without such a service there would be bedlam, with every license change potentially having considerable knock on effects for derivative works. So, far from the Internet Archive being something for the future, it has very real relevance now, and its a larger player in the Creative Commons revolution than people give it credit for.
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References:
Internet Archive
Scribd:
In Praise of the Internet Archive
Turning the Tables on High Rise Hell June 18, 2008
Posted by townsend51 in mvrdv architecture modernism design modular envinronmen.add a comment
Virgin Galactic: a design and engineering triumph June 13, 2008
Posted by townsend51 in Foster, Rutan, Starke, aerospace, architecture, spaceport, spaceshiptwo, virgin galactic.add a comment
Why is this? Well, Branson has enlisted the services of some of the most esteemed designers and engineers to work on the core infrastructure required to make such an audacious plan a reality. First there was Burt Rutan, the aerospace maverick, whose company, Scaled Composites, has been responsible for some the most pioneering aircraft of the last 50 years. None of them were suborbital of course, until SpaceShipOne, which completed the first ever privately funded human spaceflight in 2004. Its successor, SpaceshipTwo will have sufficient capacity for six paying passengers and two pilots. A lot of details concerning SpaceShipTwo will be kept under raps until the months or even weeks preceding the first commercial flight, but the broad schema shouldn’t change much from what is shown below.
The design of the spaceport is in equally good hands. There is probably only one architect in the world suited to such a project, owing to an entire career founded on futuristic, technologically accomplished buildings: Sir Norman Foster. His design is nothing short of stunning. From a distance its sinuous shape lends it the look of a dune, sitting atop the sandy plains of New Mexico. An aerial view reveals it as something much more exotic. The main body of the building looks like a sleek Millennium Falcon (well I like to think so!), and the glass frontal portion which faces the run way makes its aeronautical connections explicit. Its cool credentials are cemented when you consider that no other space port designs, whether in films or in comic books, look half as good as this one.
There’s one other designer who warrants a mention: Philip Starke. He was responsible for the interior of SpaceShipTwo, which is arguably one of the most important elements, seeming as it will dictate much of the passenger experience. Starke is both admired and vilified in the design community. Some people admire his clean, modern designs, while others find them prosaic and lifeless. But the design of a spacecraft needn’t be cuddly. The end result is somewhat reminiscent of 2001:A Space Odyssey, with its stark white interior. Passengers nestle inside giant meringues, which recline once the spacecraft has broken orbit. The passengers can then rise up, buoyed by the lack of gravity. Its grand stuff, and in my opinion Starke’s design has at last found the perfect match: something in need of high tech finesse, unlike all that crockery he’s been peddling for decades.
If I’ve failed to convince you of the brilliance of this whole enterprise, then I’m a miserable failure. But hopefully this video will do the job:
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Django or Rails? June 12, 2008
Posted by townsend51 in django, framework, python, ruby, ruby on rails, web 2.0.2 comments
Much has been written about ROR elsewhere, so I shan’t go into unnecessary detail. Suffice to say that ROR is a web framework which allows programmers to create web applications quicker and easier than before.
When it was launched in 2004, it was the first framework of its kind. It was also remarkable for its use of Ruby, which is a fairly niche programming language.
Ruby is a very high level language (VHLL), and it’s worth considering what this is. The lowest level is machine code, which the computer can understand, and then there’s high level code (such as C and Java) which is easier for a person to understand. Very high level code is a further abstraction, which allows programmers to code more succinctly.
But there are other VHLL languages available, the most popular of which is Python. In fact, the usage of Python dwarfs that of Ruby. It’s used by companies as diverse as Astra Zeneca, NASA and ILM, to name but a few. There was a great desire amongst the Python community for their own framework. As generally happens, a number of projects appeared, but we will only consider one of them: Django.
Django was first released a full year after ROR burst onto the scene. The uptake of ROR by the web community was remarkable, and it developed at break neck speed. For a long time Django has been playing catch up, but now it is as good, if not better, than ROR.
True, they are technically very similar, but its the non-technical details that sets them apart.
Firstly, there is a lot of bad sentiment amongst members of the ROR community. I attribute this largely to the uptake of ROR by entrepreneurs, many of which haven’t coded before. Just imagine you’re at a party, happily chatting away with like-minded individuals, and then suddenly wham!, a group of people come bumbling in with an entirely different mindset. There’s clearly going to be friction, and in particular, the addition of a financial imperative can cause relations to sour(1). Furthermore, the ROR people have quickly cottoned on to how lucrative the framework could be. A raft of books were rushed to market, most of which are lamentably bad. The exception is Agile Web Development with Rails, which was written by the inventor of ROR, and is a very good book. However, that book is the only good source of information on ROR. Its not freely available as an ebook, and the lag between paper editions is unbelievable. ROR version 2.0 was released in December 2007, and the corresponding update to the boo won’t hit shelves until October 2008!
Contrast this with Django. If you go to the Django website, you’ll find an instructional ebook which is fabulously well written, freely available, and kept bang up to date.
The other main differentiator is something which ROR could never have seen coming: the Google App Engine (GAE). GAE allows people access to Google’s infrastructure, most notably of which is the proprietary database Big Table, which was been designed with sufficient redundancy and intelligence to ensure 100% up time, and huge scalability. Google use Python extensively for their own systems, and so it comes as no surprise that Python is currently the only supported language. This makes the deployment of Django based web applications easy, and very cheap. The first five million page views are free, after which you pay per Gigabyte transferred. The cost is currently much lower than Amazon S3.
ROR applications on the other hand either require you to host them yourself, or to use a specialist hosting company. Hosting ROR applications is a premium service, and is generally higher than for an equivalent LAMP stack based application which doesn’t use rails.
All of this leads me to conclude that although ROR was ground breaking in bringing frameworks to the world, it has a fight on its hands if its to remain top dog. If you’re a fan of Python, and hope to make the most of the GAE service, then Django is certainly worth a look.
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http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/01/zed-shaw-puts-the-smack-down-on-the-rails-community/
The Django or Rails? article is on Scribd as usual.
The Internet: All Hyped Out June 11, 2008
Posted by townsend51 in Uncategorized.add a comment
About This Document Sometimes the internet really frustrates me. In this article I rant about online advertising, an… (more) Sometimes the internet really frustrates me. In this article I rant about online advertising, and beg the question ‘Surely there’s a better way?’ (less)
Dvorak hijacked! June 11, 2008
Posted by townsend51 in dvorak, hijack, twitter.add a comment
It appears that John C Dvorak, the esteemed tech journalist, has had his Twitter page hijacked. Or else he got out of the wrong side of bed this morning.
Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust June 10, 2008
Posted by townsend51 in music, sigur ros.add a comment
The new Sigur Ros album is now available to stream in its entirety. Oh, what a momentous day this is!
New iPhone June 9, 2008
Posted by townsend51 in Apple, iphone, mobile phone, wifi.add a comment
Well there we have it, a new iPhone. Sadly, nothing new came out of the keynote that hadn’t already been splashed around the internet in the preceding weeks. Even so, I have to commend macrumorslive.com for their timely coverage of the event. Out of all of the websites providing ‘live coverage’ macrumours was certainly the fastest. They also had a nice feature whereby the web page automatically updated, which meant I didn’t have to press the refresh button every few seconds.
I was really expectant of this event, as can be well appreciated by anyone with a modicum of respect for Apple. But even though people were fairly indifferent towards the Air after the last keynote, in my opinion it represented more innovation of Apple’s behalf than what I saw today. Maybe I’m holding Apple to a ridiculously standard, but that’s what I’ve come to expect. And if Apple has any chance of coaxing as much as a penny from my hermetically sealed wallet, they’d better come up with fantastic products with a unique value proposition. When Steve Jobs announced the reduced price for the iPhone I almost reached for the crow bar to prize out my cash card, but upon further inspection of the Apple website, it appears that the iPhone will remain a contract exclusive phone. Arghhhhh. This is one of my pet hates. I’m certainly in the minority when it comes to mobile phones. I count myself amongst 100 year old yokels and freshly popped babies in that I don’t own a mobile phone. They’re so damned expensive! An internet connection costs around £15 a month in the UK, whilst most half decent mobile phone contracts start at £30. If I’m looking for bang for my buck, then I’ll try and leverage my internet connection to the max. And as a student there is no way I’ll accrue hundreds of pounds worth of debt unless its absolutely necessary. I know, call me tight, and a technophobe, but there is surely a better way. For instance, with my BT broadband internet package I get access to roaming wifi connections for free. So by using my ipod touch or wireless laptop I can access the internet, and communicate with whoever I wish. The only cinch is the lack of SMS, and any website that offers such a service is usually woefully ill equipped, but in the era of Twitter, SMS is not half as important as it once was.
Even though Apple is turning a new page in the saga of the mobile phone, as far as I’m concerned mobile phones are already woefully extravagant devices, and unless the back of the cost plans can be broken some time soon, I can only envisage mobile phones becoming even less relevant than their larger, land locked brethren. Long live the computer! Death to the mobile phone!
digg_url = ‘http://onemanstravels.blogspot.com/2008/06/new-iphone.html’;
Hype June 9, 2008
Posted by townsend51 in Uncategorized.add a comment
As per usual, any blog post above a certain length finds its way onto Scribd. Here is the most recent one, with the added bonus of a different cat picture.
