Eventyr

d.Construct

In trying to reflect on d.Construct 2007 I fear I have less to say than I would like.

From the volunteer’s perspective, a role I have filled many times at many other conferences, it was by far the slickest organised conference I have ever attended.  Smoother even than the ones I used to organise back in the day.  I’m glad to have helped for the little I could.

As a conference it also had the nicest T-shirts.  This must be true as I actually plan to wear mine again.  The gift bag was also darned good.  These things so often get overlooked.

I remember that I was on a high from having my first pint of cider in a month the night before.

I remember I was jet-lagged, having flown back from the states and burning man the day before.

I remember the microphone not working just when I needed it to. 

I remember really enjoying the talks.*

I remember drinking afterwards.

I remember drinking some more.

I remember wondering if I should have had some dinner.

And now I seem to have a notepad full of drawn faces, but I don’t recall who drew them.

This probably all summates to a very good conference (v.g.c.).  Shame I don’t seem to have much in the way of notes.

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* I unfortunately clashed slightly with the talk that related to my research area, which somewhat wound me up through not mentioning all the masses of work being done in the area.  It wasn’t a bad talk, in fact it had incredibly well-done slides, just not for me.  Couldn’t be helped.

I did however develop an instant crush on Matt Webb for being the first person in my recollection to ever mention Grice in a presentation.   I wish I had not just hit jetlag nap-time so I could have focussed more on the talk overall as it seemed potentially really fascinating; sadly sleep was battering at my concentration.

No ground for play

The most expensive state school in the UK will not have an outdoor space for students when it opens in September.
Alan McMurdo, head of Peterborough's £46.4m Thomas Deacon Academy, said: "I think what the public want is maximum learning."
But Tim Gill, who led an official inquiry into children's play, said the idea "borders on inhuman".
No playground for 'super school' (via here)

Insane.  Play is good for learning.  You maximise learning by providing a place to play.

Familiar Feeling

A Guildford man has been honoured in the People’s Courage Awards for 2006 for showing ‘outstanding bravery and strength of character’ in throwing out a number of old computer cables, even though he could not remember where they came from and could not be certain that one of them might not come in handy again at some point in the future.

-- Courage award for man who threw out old computer cables (humour) - via LinkMachineGo

Movie Sans Spam

In the movies, checking your mail is a matter of picking out the one or two messages that are important to the plot. No information pollution or swamp of spam. No ever-changing client requests in the face of impending deadlines. And you never overlook information because a message's subject line violated the email usability guidelines.
Usability in the Movies - Top 10 Bloopers (via The Presurfer)

Tunnels lead to 2, 9, 11

Thanks to this MeFi post about games I have a working link to a Hunt the Wumpus game.

Not that I realised I was missing it, but it does bring back fond 'fighting-with-programming' memories.

YYyiiiieeee . . . Fell in a pit!

What code doesn't do

I understand that Hollywood needs to dress things up to make them more entertaining, but in the case of programmers, code, and hackers they've done more than dress things up  - they've morphed a little stuffed teddy bear into a cybernetic polar bear covered in christmas lights and phosphorescent hieroglyphics with a fog machine pumping rainbow smoke out of his ass.   In other words, they've layered a ridiculous amount of extravagance on top of something that in reality is very grounded.

What code DOESN'T do in real life (that it does in the movies)

Still Going Strong

But don't worry. Almost a decade later, with Moore's Law still at work, there is still a board game in which humans reign supreme. The game is Go, an oriental game of strategy. It sounds superficially easy. The board is a 19 by 19 grid of intersecting lines. The pieces (called "stones") are black or white, and identical. Once placed on the board, they do not move (unless surrounded and captured) or change colour. The object is to use one's stones to surround as many blank intersections (called "territory") as possible. And that's about it.
...
The implication is that computers are bad at Go because they're still bad at being human. Which might come as some relief. In 2002, David Levy, one of the earliest drivers of computer chess, wrote (in Do not pass Go, October 24 2002): "Perhaps Go will be the final bastion in man's attempts to stave off his inevitable intellectual defeat at the hands of the machine." Despite humanity's own best efforts to undermine it, the bastion still looks remarkably solid.

Good to see people are still writing about this. And nice to have the skill levels laid out as well (I rank about 16 kyu so still have a long way to go).

Second Reporter Life

Boosey Hazlehurst: What's an experienced hack like you doing in a made-up world?

Adam Reuters: this is where the story is.

For some this must be an ideal, get paid to hang out in Second Life, doing nothing but chatting to people.