--- Day changed Wed Apr 16 2008 00:37 < drazak> bah, he left 00:37 < drazak> he never finished all those books 00:56 -!- epitron_ is now known as epitron 01:35 -!- Aulere [n=dragon_d@131.229.176.252] has quit [] 07:34 -!- kanzure [n=bryan@cpe-70-113-54-112.austin.res.rr.com] has joined #hplusroadmap 07:57 < kanzure> Hey epitron. 08:07 < kanzure> fenn: I'm trying to figure out if I should link to my 2007 journal that I was doing for the local literature class. It's the closest thing to a raw mind-dump that you can come across. 08:14 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/docs/cheat_sheet_writing.pdf <-- heh, an old document I wrote 08:14 < kanzure> (found while trying to find a spot to upload the PDF) 08:14 < kanzure> (the journal) 09:16 -!- kanzure [n=bryan@cpe-70-113-54-112.austin.res.rr.com] has quit [Read error: 110 (Connection timed out)] 17:47 -!- kanzure [n=bryan@cpe-70-113-54-112.austin.res.rr.com] has joined #hplusroadmap 18:06 -!- Splicer [n=p@h84n3c1o261.bredband.skanova.com] has joined #hplusroadmap 18:17 < Splicer> I have made an observation: 18:18 < Splicer> When you talk about bioDIY with someone under 30 they go 'wow, that's cool, where can I find out more about it?' 18:19 < Splicer> ...and when you talk to someone over 30 they go 'wow, that's cool, what stock should I buy?' 18:44 < kanzure> Sort of. Anybody over 30 just kind of guys "Huh. Interesting." and leaves it at that. 18:46 < Splicer> do you think it has the potential to be as big as the hacker culture? 18:47 < Splicer> The idea of hacking life, it's enticing 18:49 < kanzure> Surely. 18:49 < kanzure> fenn: I have a riddle for you. 18:49 < kanzure> What is a programmer without his computer? 18:50 < kanzure> How do simulation packages usually work? I have seen a few 'alife' simmers and others, but I never thought to check into how they all plug in. Do you do simulation based off of interacting components? If so, how do you mediate the messaging between those underlying packages? 18:51 < kanzure> I think we have to assume that all things can be sequentially simulated, otherwise we get into weird messaging interfaces that must be accounted for, which would be great if somebody wants to add them for each of the individual packages, but not an implementation requirement. 18:53 < fenn> splicer you dont read much science fiction do you :) 18:54 < Splicer> no 18:54 < fenn> generally simulation packages dont work together, or if they do, one uses another's API as a sub-module 18:55 < fenn> it's just too complicated to make everything happen at the same time 18:55 < fenn> ever played with oregano? 18:55 < fenn> (simple electronics simulator) 18:57 < fenn> kanzure: a businessman? 18:57 < fenn> (re: riddle) 18:58 < kanzure> I was pondering that in school. 18:58 < kanzure> I came up with this: "a prisoner." 18:58 < Splicer> (being without net feels like that) 18:59 < kanzure> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/business/media/14link.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin <-- guy getting rich off of automatically generated books. 18:59 < kanzure> He's also thinking about doing erotica. "There are only so many body parts." ;) 19:00 < kanzure> I used to do automatic story generators. It was getting intense, since I needed to do some linguistics and search databases for grammars, wording, and persistent subjects. But otherwise I had automated the Aristotlean plot with a RNG. 19:00 < Splicer> music is probably easier 19:00 < kanzure> it's been done 19:00 < kanzure> but perhaps not to the exact sounds 19:00 < Splicer> you mean the mozart one? 19:01 < kanzure> Hm? I haven't heard of that. There's been some automated music generators, such as with cellular automata and random permutation libraries. 19:01 < fenn> hofstadter claims to have a pretty decent mozart impersonator 19:02 < Splicer> it could probably work very well, the parameters are finite 19:02 < drazak> kanzure: can you finish sending those books? 19:02 < Splicer> there is only so many ways to do an ac/dc song 19:03 < fenn> i've heard a lot of really crap computer generated music, the trick is doing it well 19:04 < fenn> and not just copying what already exists 19:06 < kanzure> drazak: You'll need to send me the details again. 19:06 < kanzure> drazak: Btw, it quit randomly during the night when I left it running. I don't remember any particular errors except 'connection lost'. 19:07 < kanzure> fenn: randomly generated techno should work well, right? 19:09 < Splicer> all music on the hitlists is bits and pieces put togeteher from old stuff 19:09 < kanzure> Don't cite nickleback. 19:09 < Splicer> ..and especially nickeback 19:10 < kanzure> yawn 19:10 < fenn> i'm one of those rare people that can tell the difference between good and bad techno 19:11 < Splicer> nudity in the video? 19:11 < kanzure> I haven't listened to techno but for a few days, what's the difference? 19:11 < fenn> um, it's subjective 19:15 < Splicer> There was a british band once called KLF, they had a number of hitsongs... they wrote a manual on how to do it, they basically said take what's been on te lists the last years and cut and paste. 19:16 < Splicer> The book was often quoted in the cyberpunk culture... 19:16 < Splicer> as part of that culture was the realization that we´re all just programs interacting. 19:17 < drazak> kanzure: yeah, we were having brown outs 19:17 < fenn> KLF was a sort of techno-wiki 19:17 < fenn> anyone could post songs to their digital radio station 19:18 < Splicer> they were many things 19:19 < Splicer> Their legacy is "The manual": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manual 19:19 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/mediawiki/index.php/2008-04-16 19:21 < fenn> hmm not sure i'd want my brain to be rebooted 19:22 < kanzure> they also did 'brain rebooting' in electroconvulsion therapy 19:22 < fenn> did that reset addictions too? 19:22 < kanzure> the concept was to send a few hundred volts through your head, kill you, and etc. 19:22 < kanzure> dunno 19:22 < fenn> it didnt kill you 19:22 < kanzure> killed your brain, brought it down to 'zero' 19:22 < kanzure> and then it sprang back up 19:23 < fenn> according to zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, he was having a nice drink at a cocktail party, fell asleep, and then woke up in another body 19:23 < kanzure> kill in terms of the way you can 'kill' your computer 19:23 < kanzure> heh, I have a few friends who want to buy his motorcycle 19:23 < kanzure> he still has it :) 19:24 < Splicer> i loved that book 19:24 < Splicer> the sequel sucked 19:24 < Splicer> it's a very very good book 19:26 < fenn> wow there's photos from his trip 19:27 < kanzure> http://yaml.org/type/index.html yaml type repository 19:28 * Splicer gives krebs some acetyl-coenzyme 19:28 < Splicer> time to sleep 19:28 < kanzure> cya 19:28 < Splicer> cu, bye 19:28 -!- Splicer [n=p@h84n3c1o261.bredband.skanova.com] has quit [] 19:30 < fenn> tags are mostly inferred automatically, i think 19:31 < fenn> it's something to worry about though, like you can get some error if a model number is supposed to be a string but gets parsed as an int 19:31 < fenn> i guess that's taken care of in 'validation' 19:31 < kanzure> yes 19:31 < kanzure> I was thinking I'd do some py-yaml tonight and start looking into what it would take to do the 'mime db' at least 19:32 < kanzure> or what environmental variables we'd have to use for the install script etc. 19:32 < kanzure> let's use ~/.skdb/ for everything 19:32 < kanzure> or maybe I should just ignore that at the moment 19:32 < kanzure> that is easily changed 19:32 < fenn> lets not worry about install until we have something to install 19:33 < epitron> hey guys 19:33 < fenn> i'm not a big fan of environment variables, fwiw 19:33 < epitron> i see you're still chasing moby dick 19:33 < epitron> \o/ 19:33 < kanzure> go to hell 19:34 < epitron> :D 19:34 * fenn was hoping kanzure would think of something clever 19:34 < epitron> seriously.. you think you can build what you want to build with our shitty stone knives and bearskins programming tools? 19:34 < kanzure> fenn: so then let's do local storage at the moment 19:34 < kanzure> let's put the mime db in /where/script/is/mimedb/ 19:34 < epitron> TARPIT 19:34 < epitron> TARPIT 19:34 < epitron> TARPIT 19:34 < kanzure> even though it's not mimedb, we'll just keep on calling it that 19:35 < kanzure> I think part of the problem is that we need to start off with the plugins actually 19:36 < kanzure> and then we can make the wrappers around it such as autospec, autogen, skdb, mimedb, ikiwiki+git+etc. 19:36 < kanzure> so I guess I need to go experiment with serializing python data structs :) 19:36 < fenn> yes i think specifications are the 'real deal' and trying to automatically run simulators is tilting at windmills 19:36 < epitron> tarrrrrrrrrr pittttttttttttt 19:37 < epitron> First I'll just reach in and pull my legs out. 19:37 < kanzure> epitron: Give me another way of making a macroscale self-replicating machine. 19:37 < epitron> And now I'll just pull my arms out with my face! 19:37 < kanzure> solid state 19:38 < fenn> doesnt have to be solid state 19:38 < epitron> i thought you were working on apt-get for science 19:38 < fenn> same diff 19:38 < kanzure> fenn: as opposed to wetware, I mean 19:38 < fenn> oh, i was thinking some plasma beast 19:38 < fenn> you can make plasma out of almost anything 19:38 < kanzure> epitron: you are terribly confused 19:38 < epitron> what're you making? :) 19:39 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/mediawiki/index.php/Skdb 19:39 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/mediawiki/index.php/Self-replication 19:39 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/recursion.html (last paragraph) 19:39 < epitron> i've tried to read that first page like 5 times 19:39 < epitron> it's horrible 19:39 < fenn> epitron: i'm coming at it from the yak-shaving angle 19:39 < kanzure> yak-shaving? 19:39 < epitron> can't you summarize? 19:40 < kanzure> epitron: we have for you, many times 19:40 < kanzure> epitron: are you going to listen this time? 19:40 < epitron> hahah 19:40 < epitron> when did you do it 19:40 < epitron> i'll read the logs 19:40 < fenn> yak shaving is when you find yourself looking for a can of methanol because there's ice all over your windshield and you need to drive to the store to get a bolt to fix the washer to wash your coat 19:40 < epitron> maybe you and i don't have the same definition of summary 19:40 < kanzure> epitron: automated pathfinding algorithm through a project database, think of it like apt-get for packages that aren't just software 19:40 < epitron> right 19:40 < epitron> so basically a brain 19:40 < kanzure> no 19:41 < kanzure> no ai 19:41 < epitron> but building a DB of all projects either requires I, or AI 19:41 < fenn> its a logic engine, but everything has to be carefully structured/specified by hand 19:41 < kanzure> yes, it does require I 19:41 < epitron> and I is difficult to coordinate 19:41 < kanzure> and that is truly unfortunate, however 19:41 < kanzure> it's possible because of it's mutually beneficial aspects 19:41 < fenn> if we could do it automatically, well, then that's pretty much magic 19:42 < kanzure> yep 19:42 < epitron> also, it's difficult for I to make things that a stupid machine (SM) can process 19:42 < kanzure> good point fenn 19:42 < kanzure> debian's APT didn't appear out of thin air either 19:42 < kanzure> even though it's all software 19:42 < epitron> right, but apt has very simple constraints 19:42 < kanzure> so does this system. 19:42 < epitron> ok 19:42 < epitron> so you never explained that part ;) 19:42 < kanzure> uhh 19:42 < epitron> please don't give me that link again 19:43 * kanzure wonders if he is an obsessive compulsive link-giver. Probably not. :) 19:43 < epitron> when i read your SKDB page, i get completely lost 19:43 < epitron> because it's all implementation details 19:43 < epitron> an implementation of something i'm not aware of 19:43 < fenn> and we havent settled the implementation completely either 19:44 < epitron> you need a summary :) 19:44 < epitron> a VISION 19:44 < epitron> a DIRECTIOn 19:44 < epitron> a GOAL 19:44 < epitron> a LOW DIMENSIONAL SEMANTIC VECTOR 19:44 < fenn> piss off already, sheesh 19:44 < epitron> haha 19:44 < epitron> alright 19:44 -!- epitron [i=epi@bito.ponzo.net] has left #hplusroadmap [] 19:45 < fenn> so, its taco night. i'll probably not be able to concentrate on programming 19:46 < fenn> whining at people trying to get work done doesn't help anyone 19:47 < kanzure> "you need a GOAL" 19:47 < kanzure> what happened to macroscale self-replication 19:47 < kanzure> wtf? 19:48 < fenn> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_media_type 19:51 < kanzure> how is 'stuffit' a common mime type? 19:52 < fenn> destroy! 19:52 < kanzure> if we add it to a 'not so common' list, then it will be destroyed 19:52 < kanzure> but if we leave it, it's factually incorrect 19:52 < kanzure> blah, wikipedia sucks 19:52 < kanzure> they can stand to have that small line on their page 19:52 < kanzure> but they would delete it if it was a list of uncommon content-types 19:53 < kanzure> too many ideological 'tards or something. I don't even know how to describe the problem. 19:54 < fenn> OCD 19:54 < kanzure> toread: http://pyyaml.org/wiki/PyYAMLDocumentation 19:54 < kanzure> No, that'd be more about formatting, I think. 19:54 < fenn> hmm. well, it seems like people get territorial about 'their' page 19:54 < kanzure> Would OCD include content filtering for a status quo? 19:54 < kanzure> sure 19:54 < fenn> add a dash of NIH syndrome 19:54 < kanzure> ah 19:55 < fenn> i used to think that meant national institute of health 19:55 < kanzure> haha, in my inbox: Please forward to interested colleagues and recent graduates. 19:55 < kanzure> *New Hire: Assistant Prof. to teach synthetic biology* 19:55 < kanzure> Please e-mail me your resume and brief cover letter stating your experience 19:55 < kanzure> and motivation to teach synthetic biology to undergraduates.  You will also 19:55 < kanzure> have access to research facilities and this position could provide a 19:55 < kanzure> springboard for your career.  The institution is on the East coast and the 19:55 < kanzure> appointment would start this summer/fall, international applicants are 19:55 < kanzure> welcome to apply.  May 1st is the last date we'll be accepting resumes. 19:55 < fenn> just call it wikipedia syndrome, people will understand 19:55 < kanzure> maybe I'll email my resume ;) 19:56 < fenn> is that UT? 19:56 < kanzure> no, east coast is not UT 19:56 < fenn> oh. maybe it's east cost of texas :) 19:56 < kanzure> nah, it's MIT 19:56 < fenn> ah i see 19:56 < fenn> i think you have to be an assistant professor 19:57 < fenn> or is that the position they're filling? 19:57 < kanzure> "young programmer looking to acquire an S6 moonbrain, references available upon request" 19:57 < fenn> i just want an oneill cylinder, a small one will do 19:58 < kanzure> hehe 19:58 < kanzure> I should have kept adding to that 2007_journal.pdf file this year 19:58 < kanzure> I regret not doing that. 19:59 < fenn> no you should have started 2008_journal.pdf 19:59 < kanzure> sure 19:59 < fenn> its only april, eh 19:59 < kanzure> I named it 2007_journal.pdf only yesterday 19:59 < fenn> you have zillions of logs anyway, what more can you write? :) 20:00 < fenn> just keep an irc window open with /msg kanzure 20:00 < kanzure> I seem to work off of a caching system whereby I jump from one subject to another, and don't return from my recursions in a sense 20:00 < kanzure> fenn: yes, that's what I do 20:00 < kanzure> fenn: I have 5 megabytes of plaintext with myself 20:00 < kanzure> actually, 20 20:00 < fenn> wow 20:00 < kanzure> I was doing a textcrawler back in January 20:00 < kanzure> trying to extract relevant notes and so on 20:00 < kanzure> but the problem is that it's just flatout *hard* to do 20:00 < kanzure> it's all lost, gone, hidden 20:00 < kanzure> I should have been doing HTML pages on my site 20:01 < kanzure> that's why I have recently been increasing the number of pages that I have been adding 20:01 < kanzure> as opposed to /msg kanzure ;) 20:01 < fenn> oh, structured text is easier to read you mean 20:01 < fenn> then its all in the same place 20:01 < kanzure> not only that, but I can section it up 20:01 < kanzure> as opposed to the timestamped logging idea 20:01 < kanzure> where everything is "send once, save forever" 20:01 < kanzure> as opposed to editable, rewritable, linkable, markupable 20:02 < fenn> you could dump your log into a wiki page 20:02 < kanzure> blogging is otherwise known as the bookmarking dilemma http://heybryan.org/bookmarking.html 20:02 < kanzure> I could, but then you'd get lots of nasty stuff 20:02 < kanzure> haha 20:02 < fenn> oh well 20:02 < fenn> i can barely read all the links you paste as it is 20:03 < kanzure> I try to eat +300 links/night at the moment 20:03 < kanzure> but it takes 40 sec to bookmark these days 20:03 < kanzure> so I've been falling behind 20:03 < kanzure> that's why I've been adding pages on my site instead 20:03 < kanzure> as an alternative. 20:05 < fenn> you could keep folders (a tree map would be best) and drag'n'drop pages onto them, then you're dealing with files and directories. i guess this doesnt solve anything 20:05 < fenn> http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/treemap/ 20:06 < fenn> there's a filesystem viewer like that somewhere 20:06 < kanzure> yes 20:06 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/todo.html <-- check this out 20:06 < kanzure> (graphviz with a backend file system for directed cyclic graphs + virtual links would be *freaking awesome*) 20:07 < fenn> on the other hand, i always have trouble sorting a link into just one category 20:07 < kanzure> yep 20:07 < fenn> tags are much easier to 'write' 20:08 < kanzure> yes, but then you might change tagging policies or ontologies 20:08 < kanzure> thus 'the refactoring problem' 20:08 < kanzure> btw, todo.html was from 2005 20:09 < fenn> my (woefully incomplete) todo http://fennetic.net/milesaway/ben 20:10 < kanzure> fishtub? 20:11 < kanzure> re: "contact neil gershenfeld once a week until response, use different media" 20:11 < fenn> well, i havent done that yet 20:11 < kanzure> if you want that to happen, 20:11 < kanzure> David works for Neil. 20:11 < kanzure> and Noah gets computers from Neil. 20:11 < fenn> who is noah? 20:11 < kanzure> the Noah kid that came in a few weeks ago 20:11 < kanzure> was talking with drazak. 20:12 < fenn> well, gershenfeld is basically doing what i'm doing, but he gets paid 20:12 < drazak> heh 20:12 < kanzure> yes 20:12 < drazak> Who? 20:12 < kanzure> this is why I know David. 20:12 < kanzure> http://cba.mit.edu/ 20:12 < kanzure> Center for Bits and Atoms 20:12 < kanzure> "It from bit, and bit from it." 20:12 < kanzure> self-replicating machines and so on 20:13 < kanzure> I saw David in some old news articles and then saw that he was associated with CBA, and jumped on the opportunity -- stalked him down and got to know him 20:13 < kanzure> we're good friends now :) 20:13 < fenn> boston just seems so dreary and big-city 20:13 < kanzure> I wouldn't mind trying it out. 20:13 < fenn> so i have some pointless fears 20:14 < kanzure> drazak: Neil Gershenfeld is head of the MIT Media Lab. Has lots of big names in there ... 20:14 < kanzure> Ed Boyden, Marvin Minsky I think, etc. 20:14 < kanzure> http://edboyden.net/ 20:14 < fenn> eh? minksy is comp sci/AI lab 20:14 < kanzure> 'As a corollary of this work, we also seek to develop methods of human brain augmentation.' 20:16 < kanzure> Ed has an interesting page on his site entitled 'Everything I learned at MIT' http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~esb/sb1/ 20:17 < kanzure> Ed, me, and a few others work together through http://innerspacefoundation.org/ 20:18 < kanzure> Ed, I, and a * 20:18 < kanzure> whatever. I need to go. Will be back in a bit. 20:18 < fenn> ciao 21:22 < kanzure> fenn: http://heybryan.org/mailing_lists.html 21:23 < fenn> bloom's taxonomy is interesting. i've never seen half of the words on your english/writing pdf 21:24 < fenn> words/phrases 21:25 < fenn> i've whittled my mailing lists down to about 3 21:25 < fenn> bloomington linux user group, luf, emc lists 21:27 < kanzure> heh 21:27 < kanzure> my bio teacher taught us bloom's taxonomy, 21:27 < kanzure> he had us doing very 'weird' assignments that were like: 21:28 < kanzure> "Illustrate an understanding of long-term potentiation in vertebrae phylums." but they were much more vague than this 21:28 < kanzure> so basically he was looking for his students to be able to do the impossible 21:28 < kanzure> we all hated it 21:28 < kanzure> results: http://heybryan.org/school/Biology/ 21:29 < fenn> if you submit a formal proof that an assignment is impossible, do you get extra credit or sent to the principal's office? 21:29 < kanzure> ex: http://heybryan.org/school/Biology/10-23-06,%20AP%20Biology%20-%20Transport%20Objectives.html 21:29 < kanzure> he wouldn't read it 21:30 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/school/Biology/12-01-06,%20Nutritional%20requirements%20of%20animals%20assignments.html 21:30 < kanzure> ' Using your lecture notes, develop a narrative to accurately portray the amphibolic nature of cellular respiration. The narrative can be descriptive, analogous, or scientific, or another approach to your choosing. Whatever style you choose, the narrative must reflect the scope and sequence of your respiration understanding.' 21:30 < kanzure> (exact wording) 21:30 < kanzure> that's not too bad though 21:30 < kanzure> but of course, this is only in retrospect 21:30 < kanzure> from the opposite direction, those types of assignments are frightening 21:30 < fenn> the example doesnt look too bad 21:30 < fenn> mostly terminology/jargon 21:32 < fenn> lol "Describe our current understanding of human consciousness." 21:33 < fenn> i bet he thought he had an answer too 21:33 < kanzure> well, be careful 21:33 < kanzure> he didn't write most the assignments he gave us 21:33 < kanzure> it was the ones that he gave to us verbally that were terrible 21:33 < kanzure> not 'bad assignments' but just a nightmare to work through 21:33 < kanzure> but I wouldn't say that now 21:33 < kanzure> they were very open ended, so you had to be confident :) 21:34 < fenn> better than memorizing multiple choice questions 21:34 < kanzure> yep 21:34 < fenn> i assume he actually taught the answers to most of the questions 21:35 < kanzure> hm, no 21:35 < kanzure> he did very good Socratic lectures 21:35 < kanzure> yes, socratic method for bio sounds awkward 21:35 < fenn> it's what ends up happening anyway 21:35 < fenn> tangent tangent tangent 21:36 < kanzure> you get to some Bloom stuff at the top of 21:36 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/school/Biology/notes/output.html 21:36 < kanzure> wait, apparently not 21:38 < fenn> blah 21:39 < fenn> that's like 50% of what i learned in college right there 21:39 < kanzure> that's depressing. 21:40 < kanzure> CyberYoda asks "wtf, where do youg et the time to read all those?" (re: mailing_lists.html) 21:40 < kanzure> I need a witty answer. 21:40 < kanzure> I am thinking about saying I have a brain implant. 21:40 < fenn> well, telling the truth is one option 21:40 < kanzure> or making some pseudoreligious comment about attaining godhood 21:40 < kanzure> haha, truth? 21:40 < kanzure> :P 21:40 < fenn> i'd also like to know 21:41 < fenn> obviously you've learned some sort of speed-reading method 21:41 < kanzure> well, do you speed read through Google search results? 21:41 < fenn> maybe i just need a better mail client 21:42 < kanzure> I've done over 25,000 Google searches-- at some point I just started being able to *know* when a post was relevant or not based off of title, author, format, keywords, and then how much my reply would be worth - i.e., sometimes people are so fucked up that I would have to write 500 words to explain to them a better idea. 21:42 < fenn> i end up spending like 2 hours per message if i do write a response 21:43 < fenn> otherwise its just "wah i'm right and you're wrong" 21:43 < kanzure> yes, I've been tempted to start posting up my better emails on my website so that I can preserve them more accurately 21:43 < fenn> indeed 21:44 < kanzure> for other people to find them at the moment would involve searching across hundreds of mailing lists, thousands of forums 21:44 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/forums.html 21:44 < kanzure> etc. 21:53 < kanzure> I've been tempted to take out my cheat_sheet_writing.pdf when doing essays for the lit class. Just sprinkle in some fallacious arguments. Otherwise writing is difficult. 21:53 < fenn> heh, makes it fun to see if the teacher catches them? 21:54 < fenn> or just that it's hard to always be right 21:54 < kanzure> no, while the teacher is a great guy, he's not monitoring for these sorts of things 21:54 < kanzure> he's looking for "good writing" 21:56 < fenn> here's another one for your too-long list of lists: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/NEAmines/ (i havent actually read it) 21:56 < kanzure> crap, how do I miss something like that 21:56 < fenn> it might be invite-only 21:58 < kanzure> why would they not invite me. 21:58 < kanzure> seriously. 21:58 < fenn> because they only want 'serious contributors' 21:58 < kanzure> *cough* 21:58 * kanzure whistles 21:59 < fenn> hm. dataportability isnt as general as i'd hoped 22:00 < kanzure> it has some big names appearing on that list 22:00 < kanzure> lots of web2.0 CEOs. 22:00 < kanzure> (whatever that's worth) 22:00 < fenn> at least they're doing something 22:00 < kanzure> http://dataportability.org/ 22:01 < fenn> its basically semantic web re-worked for consumerism 22:01 < kanzure> it was my understanding that they want to make sure that we can harvest our data from the databases 22:01 < kanzure> so yes 22:04 < kanzure> fenn: So one of the things that I have learned from contributing to so many mailing lists is that nobody is really all that active. 22:05 < fenn> you mean it takes a fucking long time to get anything done 22:05 < kanzure> I mean, nobody is "all there". They simple are not. I have no idea WTF they must be doing, but there is very little that impresses me coming from the contributors, not too often is there something 'high impact'. 22:05 < fenn> (secondary reason i quit science) 22:05 < kanzure> nah, I think science can take a short amount of time - if you have the resources 22:05 < kanzure> to do real science it takes a few decades to get your own lab, it seems 22:05 < kanzure> and even then. 22:06 < fenn> yeah a lab is not the same as an army of grad slaves 22:06 < kanzure> Anyway, no matter how smart these people are, why is it that *I* had to come along to release http://biohack.sf.net/ ?? 22:06 < kanzure> and why is it *I* that had to write up the start to the roadmap? 22:06 < fenn> uh, "its just a zip file" 22:06 < kanzure> blah, perhaps 22:06 < fenn> i havent looked at it 22:06 < kanzure> instructions for all sorts of tools, experiments, genetic engineering riggups, etc. 22:06 < kanzure> lots of protocols too. 22:07 < fenn> what about protocols.com or whatever 22:07 < kanzure> protocols-online.org ? yeah, it doesn't have a cached copy 22:07 < kanzure> but I figure that I will do a crawl soon and include it in the next zip 22:07 < kanzure> it has the entire OpenWetWare wiki though 22:07 < kanzure> so that's good 22:08 < kanzure> My point is that they are slow. 22:08 < kanzure> or not thinking high-impact. I don't know what's going on. 22:08 < fenn> (*&@# domain squatters! 22:08 < kanzure> basically. 22:08 < fenn> i was referring to the domain squatters around protocol-online.org 22:09 < kanzure> oh 22:09 < kanzure> Part of the problem might be just that most of these guys are old. 22:10 < fenn> most people arent leaders, so they never have a *chance* to decide if what they're doing is going to make a difference or not, they're just getting paid 22:10 < fenn> the leaders are usually too bogged down in details keeping people pointed in the right direction 22:10 < fenn> its very rare that an individual can make real progress on something 22:11 < kanzure> I don't know. It's like the WIkipedia article on Transhumanism. I try to edit it to include references to all of the do-it-yourself genetic engineering as evidence of direction towards transhumanist tech, and they just delete it 22:11 < kanzure> "Bah! No! Impossible! Irrelevant!" 22:11 < fenn> did they provide justification or just 'because i'm an ass' 22:11 < kanzure> "you need to cite other sources" 22:11 < kanzure> apparently primary sources don't count 22:11 < kanzure> and I don't want to mess with it 22:12 < fenn> lack of sources never stopped anyone from writing a wiki article 22:12 < fenn> sure, just link to your page and people will see it if they're really interested 22:12 < kanzure> that's bias, isn't it? 22:12 < fenn> 'a refutation of common misconceptions about transhumanism' 22:13 < fenn> what's bias? a link? 22:13 < kanzure> yes, but then they will question my 'authority' 22:13 < kanzure> yes, because I am the one who wrote the link 22:13 < fenn> you arent allowed to link to your own page? 22:13 < kanzure> the contents of the page over on the other side of the link, I mean 22:13 < kanzure> that's my impression 22:13 < kanzure> I might be wrong. 22:13 < fenn> so, who decides what's 'authority' then? 22:13 < fenn> the CSS you use for your website? 22:14 < fenn> i mean come on, 90% of the stuff on the internet was completely fabricated 22:14 < kanzure> I suppose. 22:14 < fenn> 99% of statistics are made up on the spot 22:14 < fenn> [kanzure 2006] 22:15 < kanzure> heh 22:15 < kanzure> one of the problems with transhumanism, if you haven't noticed, is that it's too much about politics and other bullshit 22:15 < kanzure> whereas our interest is hard tech obviously 22:15 < kanzure> and that's what it was originally about 22:15 < kanzure> this is probably why it's not more popular among tech enthusiasts. Otherwise it should fit perfectly. 22:16 < kanzure> anyway, enough on that 22:16 < fenn> agreed 22:16 < kanzure> I'm losing focus. 22:17 < kanzure> ouch, Tony's mom just had a stroke 22:19 < fenn> problem with your diy-bio conglomeration is it's full of lame ideas and duplicates 22:20 < kanzure> obviously needs some work 22:20 < kanzure> I was hoping to have some community response, maybe from people that can contribute small, short tutorials etc. 22:20 < fenn> it would take a normal person a long time to read all of that 22:20 < kanzure> unfortunately it looks like I'm going to have to do the work 22:20 < fenn> and it's all stolen from other sources, so probably copyrighted 22:20 < kanzure> so I'm looking around for a cheap webcam and will be doing some videos this summer 22:20 < fenn> your sf page makes it sound like it's a finished product and all you have to do is download for instant enlightenment 22:21 < kanzure> hm 22:21 < kanzure> I didn't consider that 22:21 < fenn> i mean there's no info about who you are or what exactly you did and where you see things going 22:22 * kanzure needs to do an edit soon 22:22 < fenn> oh, there is a link to your roadmap, i guess that's good enough 22:23 < fenn> i think its funny the lifeboat foundation was 'angry' about it 22:24 < fenn> so you see skdb as being the way to shape up biohack.sf.net 22:34 < fenn> so i guess ellington's famous: http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/?p=728 A guy named Andrew Ellington has developed a method to initiate “…some therapeutic action that would be directed only to that cell…” 22:45 < fenn> projected <$1000 mini-robot rapid prototyping toolkit: http://robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ronf/DESKTOP/index.html 22:58 < kanzure> neat 22:58 < kanzure> fenn: Ellington's famous work is about automated aptamer selection experiments. These are molecular sensors that can be selected for like the directed evolution experiments. 23:00 < fenn> pardon my ignorance, but how's that better than monoclonal antibodies? more convenient? 23:00 < fenn> or is it specifically dna aptamers 23:00 < kanzure> how do you create new antibodies? 23:01 < fenn> when an organism with an immune system is born, it creates billions of random permutations, one for each b-cell 23:01 < fenn> you then sensitize it to your antigen, and find the b-cell that makes that antibody 23:02 < fenn> antibodies are handy because they have a common/conserved stem 23:02 * fenn reads the aptamer wikipedia article again 23:03 < kanzure> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptamer 23:03 < kanzure> heh 23:03 < kanzure> yes 23:04 < kanzure> http://aptamer.icmb.utexas.edu/ 23:04 < kanzure> I guess this just might be better since you don't have to do billions of random permutations and can instead combine rationalization and DNA synthesis etc. 23:05 < fenn> ohh selection in vitro 23:05 < fenn> now that's different 23:06 < kanzure> she died 10 minutes after I mentioned that 23:06 < kanzure> yikes 23:07 < fenn> my condolences 23:07 < kanzure> http://fuckdeath.org/ 23:14 < fenn> the aptamer database kinda sucks as far as usability goes 23:15 < kanzure> when I think/know "I can do better", am I just an ass? 23:16 < fenn> i'd expect some kind of standardized 'binding specificity' and 'binding strength' 23:16 < fenn> not just a crapload of papers to sort through 23:17 < fenn> i'm sure each of those papers took at least a month of someone's time 23:17 < fenn> not that hard to make the data useful 23:21 < kanzure> I should be able to create a python object as I would normally, and then say 'yaml.dump(myPythonVariableObjectInstance)', yes? 23:22 < kanzure> http://pyyaml.org/wiki/PyYAMLDocumentation search for the part that says '!!python/object' 23:23 < kanzure> awesome 23:23 < kanzure> 'You may even dump instances of Python classes.' 23:23 < kanzure> that's pretty useful 23:26 < kanzure> don't know about yaml error catching though 23:27 < kanzure> with autospec why would there ever be a yaml-validation error? 23:27 < kanzure> as long as you follow all of the dependencies? 23:27 < kanzure> maybe yaml complains when the 'type' (the python/integer/double/ stuff at the top) is not available, and mentions the type required 23:28 < fenn> i dont know how code would be represented in yaml 23:28 < kanzure> not code 23:28 < kanzure> you do a dump of an instance of a class/object 23:28 < kanzure> erm 23:28 < kanzure> an object is an instance of a class 23:28 < kanzure> so you do a dump of an object 23:28 < kanzure> and then it needs that class to be available on the receiving end 23:30 < fenn> oh. that works. 23:31 < kanzure> just wondering how it checks if that class is available, and what it says if that class isn't. 23:31 < kanzure> does it say "please find it" or does it just make the entire program halt? 23:31 < fenn> throws an exception hopefully 23:31 < kanzure> hopefully? 23:32 < fenn> well, i havent used it yet 23:32 < kanzure> I thought we want to automatically handle the problems? 23:32 < kanzure> exceptions usually halt 23:32 < kanzure> and aren't easily parseable 23:32 < fenn> no, you can catch an exception and fix the problem 23:32 < kanzure> maybe it can throw an exception in yaml! 23:32 < fenn> automatically 23:32 < kanzure> hehe 23:32 < fenn> heh 23:32 < kanzure> yeah, but what's the exception going to look like? 23:32 < fenn> ImportError: No module named foo 23:32 < fenn> or whatever 23:33 < kanzure> hopefully 'foo' is a variable given to us, not just plaintext (yuck) 23:33 < fenn> >>> try: 23:33 < fenn> ... import foo 23:33 < fenn> ... except ImportError: 23:33 < fenn> ... print "foo not loaded" 23:35 < fenn> try help(ImportError) 23:36 < kanzure> huh? 23:36 < kanzure> help() does what? 23:36 < kanzure> or do we write help()? 23:36 < fenn> tells you how to use the object (the exception object in this case) 23:37 < fenn> uh, that wouldnt be part of the code 23:37 < kanzure> was thinking it was some sort of autospec 'autohelp' submethod 23:40 < fenn> http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2002-September/164412.html 23:42 < fenn> i'm not that experienced with exceptions, but python doesnt just dump it in the user's lap like most languages 23:44 < fenn> ok, bitched to ellington :) 23:46 < fenn> a decent selection of aptamers sound like a nice commercial niche business 23:46 < kanzure> you bitched to him? 23:46 < kanzure> what'd you say? 23:46 < fenn> er.. i just closed the window with the form 23:46 < kanzure> oh, on the db? 23:46 < fenn> basically, there needs to be some standardized metrics and not just a bunch of paper references 23:47 < fenn> if the db is to be useful 23:51 < fenn> oh, earlier you asked about 'fishtub'? it's my inventory system, and the only thing keeping me from going barking mad in my own obsession with collecting junk: http://fennetic.net/pub/camera/DCP_0256.JPG 23:51 < fenn> they're used for airmailing fish fillets 23:52 < kanzure> not bad 23:53 < fenn> its amazing how stuff compresses when you have identical sized containers to put it in 23:53 < fenn> anyway, the local coop stopped using that fish distributor, and they dont get any more tubs 23:55 < fenn> plz share any python-yaml stuff you create 23:55 < kanzure> sure 23:55 < kanzure> but right now I'm stuck in a DBZ rut in the background before I head off to bed 23:56 * kanzure checks, apparently he is on page 13 of Google image search results 23:56 < kanzure> trying to find a certain image for a page of mine. 23:56 < fenn> okies, gnight or something 23:56 < kanzure> g'night