I haven’t taken a good self-portrait in the last six months so last night I figured I was due. I drove to Assiniboine Forest after church and took a few shots, the best of which is this.
There is something so peaceful about a forest at night.
One of the many useless phrases I’ve learned that passes through my head regularly;
Wunwun was a bishop
Tutu was one too
Wunwun won a peace prize
Tutu won one too
At the art opening, he’d been convinced the blank canvas symbolized endless possibilities. Back at home, it was just one more reminder of his own desperation.
Unhappy Hipsters is a blog that takes pictures of unhappy looking people found in design publications and captions them. It seems the combination of modern design, slate, and glass alienates us all.
Last night was the official launch of the Book of Hours at McNally Robinson. The cafe was packed for live music, readings, and a few speeches. It was a great event.
I must say that I am completely impressed with the finished product.
Now, this is the first time I’ve spoken of the Book of Hours here, so it deserves some explanation. A Book of Hours was a prayer book which brought the prayers of the monasteries outside into the community.
The book centers around seven seasons in the church calendar (Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost and Ordinary Time) and the seven times of prayer (Vigils, Lauds, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline). All together there are 49 sections to the book and each has a piece of writing, art, and/or music to illuminate it.
I must confess that I think this is a really neat idea and it has been brilliant in its execution. This is a book made by small community featuring content from almost 50 of its members. Its nice to be a part of a community that values art in this context and provides ways of sharing it with others.
If you want to learn more, visit the book’s website. There are also music samples from the included CD and details of how it can be purchased.
With yesterday’s news of an earthquake in Chile I found myself browsing blogs for information and found an excellent tool. Hungary’s Association of Radio Distress Signalling and Infocommunications’ Emergency and Disaster Information Service is an interactive online map tracking all manner of emergency’s and disasters around the globe.
This is an amazing webpage since it provides massive amounts of information in an easy to use format. It also shows many disasters that you are unlikely to see on the evening news. Earthquakes, mosques collapsing, norovirus outbreaks, power outages, you name it – it’s here. This is a great website to spend an afternoon at just to learn more about what’s happening in the world.
Bruce Schneier has an excellent article on security cameras at CNN.
On January 19, a team of at least 15 people assassinated Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Dubai police released video footage of 11 of them. Although it was obviously a very professional operation, the 27 minutes of video is fascinating in its banality.
Team members walk through the airport, check into and out of hotels, get into and out of taxis. They make no effort to hide themselves from the cameras, sometimes seeming to stare directly into them. They obviously don’t care that they’re being recorded, and — in fact — the cameras didn’t prevent the assassination, nor as far as we know have they helped as yet in identifying the killers.
Pervasive security cameras don’t substantially reduce crime. This fact has been demonstrated repeatedly: in San Francisco, California, public housing; in a New York apartment complex; in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; in Washington; in study after study in both the U.S. and the U.K. Nor are they instrumental in solving many crimes after the fact.
Reading this I am curious how many crimes the ten police operated security cameras in downtown Winnipeg have prevented, or even how many crimes were solved with the assistance of the cameras. I’ve never really been a fan of the cameras, so I am interested to hear what the city has to say in March when they are to review the cameras effectiveness. Hopefully we can get rid of the cameras and put the money where it will actually have a larger impact.
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I could probably find more productive uses of my time, but this is pretty awesome.
Lately I’ve been thinking about the One Laptop per Child program and I’m wondering if they are going down the wrong path.
The OLPC program was formed to oversee the creation of a cost effective laptop for children in developing countries. Great idea right?
To go about this they decided to design their own laptops. These are slightly different than normal laptops in that they are more rugged, built to be used in bright sunlight, and cheaper than average. The target price for laptops was to be $100.
To this end they designed some brilliant laptops, but never were able to get the cost below $200 per laptop. Although these laptops are far less expensive than average, the price is still double what they originally budgeted. I got thinking about this more when I saw some netbooks on Ebay with roughly comparable specifications selling for $100.
My question is “Why innovate and generate a stream of expensive hardware when you can instead focus on taking inexpensive hardware and reducing the price even further?” Admittedly the Ebay netbooks aren’t as rugged, but at half the price this just might be forgivable. The extra demand from the OLPC project could have also created economies of scale and possibly reduced the price even further.
Right now I’m thinking that the choice to build rather than buy probably stems from some typical nerdy thinking. Why buy when you can build and fiddle around with cool hardware?
What difference could they have made if they chose to forgo hardware development in order to meet their target price? How many more children could have a laptop? How many more lives could have been changed?
Today I found a term I like based off of an old quote; the Rumsfeld unknown. A Rumsfeld unknown is a outcome or circumstance which cannot be predicted by an observer. Previously referred to as an unknown unknown.
There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don’t know.
- Donald Rumsfeld
Some boffins have created a sensor and laser setup that detects mosquitoes in the air and shoots them down. Obvious safety issues aside, this is a really interesting and promising way to deal with nuisance bugs. Winnipeg doesn’t need more fogging trucks, Winnipeg just needs a laser mounted on every street light.
Visit the Intellectual Ventures website to see two videos of mosquitoes in flight and one of mosquitoes being shot down.
This is my blog, the place where I can post anything I want on the internet. Typical posts include stories, photographs and humorous things I've found elsewhere.
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