Reluctant Blogger

(Griffith Park Fire, Los Angeles)

Update:  it sounds like Dante’s View is gone.

Update #2: to include a few of the remarkable photos from LA Times and its readers below.

I took the below earlier this evening;  it is my first meager attempt at amateur phonecam journalism (emphasis on amateur - - mine is the bad one.)  It doesn’t come close to doing the subject justice. Picture snagged from the LA Times shows what I could see but not capture with the hardware on hand.

It sounds like the winds have finally died down and the fire teams are making progress now. Some friends in that neighborhood have had to evacuate temporarily and may be headed over to sleep in the guest room. My best wishes to the rescue workers and everyone directly impacted by the fire.

The LA Times blog has breaking coverage.  A few more pictures after the jump. 

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I finally got around to installing this today.  I can’t imagine there’s anyone left out there who wants an invite who hasn’t already found a way to get one, but just in case, I figured I’d post.  If anyone would like one, just leave me a message here, or shoot me an email (link in the sidebar) and I’ll send you an invite. 

For Kenna, and anybody else wondering what in the hell I’m talking about, Joost is the new IPTV company from the founders of Skype (and Kazaa, I believe.)

From their website:

Joost is a new way of watching TV on the internet. With Joost, you get all the things you love about TV, including a high-quality full-screen picture, hundreds of full-length shows and easy channel-flipping.

Tagged: joost

I sat down at my computer 2 hours ago to look up something important, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was right now. I have a vague sense that it may be all Chris Anderson’s fault.

I ended up at his Long Tail blog where he has a short post up about "the awesome power of spare cycles" which linked up with my interest in productive gaming.

What killed me wasn’t the blog entry, though, it was the comments which led me to Dr. Luis van Ahn’s site at Carnegie Mellon University. From his site:

Most of my time is spent inventing novel techniques for utilizing the computational abilities (or "cycles") of humans.

 Applications of human computation so far include:

 CAPTCHA, computer-generated tests that people can pass but that computers can’t.

The ESP Game, in which people playing a fun online game end up labeling images (to improve image searches, to improve access to the web for the blind, etc.)

 Phetch and Peekaboom are other games - I spent over an hour playing the latter, and found it surprisingly addictive. Dr. van Ahn reports on his research page that some people play the ESP game in excess of 40 hours per week, and that over a million datapoints have already been generated. :0

A video of his Google Tech Talk on human computation here.

Update:  A quick miscellaneous plug for another productive use of "spare cycles" (your computer’s) - - I just started my own Folding @ Home team for the fun of it.  There’s a full description here, and the client software can be downloaded here.  Reluctant Blogger’s team # is 69530 if you’d like to join.  

Update 2:  A lazyweb question - there’s a startup (in Palo Alto, I believe) using strategies inspired by MMOG’s to enhance email productivity.  I read about it on CNet awhile back, and now I can’t find the link.  Update 3:  Nevermind ;-)  Found it.  The company is called Seriosity if any one else is interested.

Papers to follow up and read when I have time:

Games With a Purpose
In IEEE Computer Magazine
Luis von Ahn, Ruoran Liu and Manuel Blum
Improving Accessibility of the Web with a Computer
Game. In ACM CHI Notes 2006
Luis von Ahn, Mihir Kedia and Manuel Blum
How Lazy Cryptographers do AI
In Communications of the ACM, Feb. 2004
Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, Nick Hopper and John Langford
CAPTCHA: Using Hard AI Problems for Security
In Eurocrypt 2003

As of about midnight, google.com is now resolving to iGoogle for me - - I’m assuming this is a test, and am curious if others out there are seeing the same thing?  This happens regardless of whether or not I’m logged into Google services at the time.

Quick editorial note:  I’m writing this May-1st and post dating for next week when I’ll be traveling.

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I haven’t seen mention of these elsewhere, so thought I’d present a couple of headlines that I just saw today for your consideration.

Story #1

From the Globe and Mail’s story "A few trips decades ago put an end to this one" we learn about prominent Vancouver psychotherapist Andrew Feldmar…

VANCOUVER — Nearly 40 years ago, a young psychotherapist embraced two-thirds of LSD guru Timothy Leary’s advice to the Sixties generation to "turn on, tune in and drop out."

Curious how LSD and other hallucinogens might be used in treating patients, Andrew Feldmar turned on and tuned in himself.

But he never dropped out. And, no fan of the late Dr. Leary, Mr. Feldmar took his last hit of acid in 1974.

Thirty-two years, however, turned out to be but an instant in the long, unrelenting U.S. war on drugs. Last summer, in an incident that has just come to light, Mr. Feldmar, now 66, was banned from entering the United States because of his long-ago use of LSD.

A couple things to note here:  1)  Dr. Feldmar was never charged of a crime, 2)  The drug use was over 30 years ago.

So how did the border guards find out about it?  Oh, right - almost forgot - they Googled him.  And found an article he’d written for a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal.  Good thing he didn’t blog it;  could have been much worse.  Why anyone in their right minds would have a blog is beyond me… :0

Advice from the attorney quoted in the story?  Not terribly helpful - it basically boils down to ‘be careful out there’:  "It’s not like you can just burn your notebooks any more," he said. "This is forever, folks."

Mr. Feldmar was held at the border for five hours, before being allowed to return to Canada after signing an admission that he had once violated the U.S. Controlled Substance Act. He said he signed out of fear that he might be kept in custody even longer if he refused. Willie Hicks, public affairs officer for the border crossing, said yesterday that Mr. Feldmar admitted violating U.S. drug laws "in a sworn statement… Mr. Feldmar is now banned permanently from entering the United States, unless he applies for and receives a waiver.

Well at least my stuff’s not online, so I don’t have anything to worry about.  Which brings us to…

Story #2

Google nudges states to make records more accessible - USATODAY.com

I’m not sure anybody else cares, but will say again anyway - - we have moved, very suddenly, into an age where we are ALL subject to a level of public scrutiny that was once the domain of celebrities (who are at least compensated for the trouble.)

This is a change which has profound societal implications that I’m not sure anyone is taking the time to properly understand as companies spend billions racing breathlessly towards our brave new future.

The founding fathers thought privacy pretty damn important.  Are we really prepared to relinquish it so quietly?

H/T Sharon @ Ghosts in the Machine for the Globe & Mail story.

Bob Cringley is reporting that IBM is planning up to 150,000 U.S. layoffs this year as part of its "LEAN" initiative.  Personally, I know two people left at IBM Global Services, and both of them currently have their paper on the street.   (more…)

I’ve been enjoying the fact that a lot of the traffic to this blog has come from non-English language sites, so I purchased a Translator plugin for wordpress to make page translation point-and-click easy.

Unfortunately (more…)

Adding this to the video playlist for M. 

via Boing Boing