--- Day changed Fri Aug 15 2008
06:01 < kanzure> odd
06:01 < kanzure> I met somebody today complaining about
06:01 < kanzure> *tonight
06:01 < kanzure> about: 
06:01 < kanzure> 1) emc
06:01 < kanzure> 2) papakura
06:01 < kanzure> 3) CADs
06:01 < kanzure> 4) gcode
06:01 < kanzure> I asked him if his name was ben but he said no
06:02  * kanzure is terribly confused.
06:04 < bkero> what
06:04  * bkero 's name is ben
06:04 < bkero> What's EMC?
06:05 < bkero> I don't know what any of those are besides CADs and Google code?
06:06 < ybit> gcode is for CAD
06:07 < kanzure> bkero: fenn is ben too
06:07 < bkero> o
06:07 < kanzure> EMC is #emc
06:07 < bkero> C is for cookie and that's good enough for me.  Fuck, now I want warm gooey cookies.
06:08 < ybit> heh
06:08 < kanzure> emc is linux cnc code
06:08 < kanzure> papakura is the art of folding paper, kind of like origami
06:08 < kanzure> gcode is what CAD software spits out to your machines to actually make your crappy product
06:09 < bkero> Er
06:09 < bkero> I've always used solidworks->toolpathes
06:09 < kanzure> toolpathes?
06:09 < bkero> Then fed that to cnc mills
06:09 < bkero> Yea
06:09 < kanzure> hm
06:09 < kanzure> I think that's kind of like gcode
06:09 < bkero> It's a path an x-axis cnc mill takes to cut your piece
06:09 < kanzure> gcode is more like "move the arm in this direction"
06:09 < kanzure> right
06:09 < bkero> Yes, gcode would be a toolpath then
06:10 < kanzure> Anyway.
06:10 < kanzure> At some point in my life I'm going to get smart enough to stop going to physical meetups to talk about Really Important Problems. Tonight I was talking with an ancient biologist about these Really Important Problems, and he has accumulated this terabyte array of random junk from over the decades.
06:10 < kanzure> And he has no index.
06:10 < bkero> I'm on the solar challenge vehicle team here, and we used solidworks to design the body, then cut the shape out of styrofoam, then male that a mold, and lay fiberglass on top of that to make a compiste.
06:10 < kanzure> basically the same boat that we're all in
06:10 < bkero> *compsite
06:11  * kanzure has an Austin Electric Vehicle group, if that counts
06:11  * bkero has made several electric vehicles. :)
06:11 < bkero> Although I've seen some awesome shit on austinev
06:11 < kanzure> you're on the mailing list?
06:11  * bkero drools over electric r
06:11 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/mailing_lists.html <-- pick out what you have in common please
06:11 < bkero> *rx7
06:12 < bkero> I have a lot of friends that work for cafeelectric designing zill acontrollers
06:12 < kanzure> Anyway, he has no index, and he's thinking of making one, and the problem that you come across with natural language indices is that they're just as shitty as the original solution you had.
06:12 < kanzure> Soon enough you'll be doing one of the damn Borges scenarios with indices of indices of indices and you'll never groundtruth your damn experiment or whatever.
06:12 < kanzure> So I think the adequate alternative is to always have the information cached in some real, live brains that are actively working in the same problem space.
06:13 < kanzure> This would be better than just hoping you can go back through 10 terabytes of stolen web pages and papers.
06:14 < bkero> Gave some talks at barcamp, majoring in bioinformatics, I maintain some biosql packages in gentoo, I'm working for google in 2 months building GFS, I work on a fork of pidgin called bitlbee, and do freecycle :P
06:14 < kanzure> Also, the issue of formatted data storage from the sciences came up, and it struck me while I was talking with these guys that we don't actually need to really be storing much information that you go around collecting -- what you need to be storing is the information on how to reconstruct the context in which the measurements were being taken (a.k.a SKDB ;-).
06:15 < kanzure> bkero: Maybe Google would like some of my projects. *cough* Semantic Search Facilitator *cough* AutoScholar http://heybryan.org/projects/autoscholar/
06:15 < bkero> I've actually been coming up with a keyword-based filesystem.  It's non-hierarchical and works off groups, keywords, and tags.
06:15 < kanzure> tagging hurrah
06:15 < kanzure> elias`: this is where you jump in with Enki-2's stuff
06:15 < kanzure> bkero: So you clearly know about Xanadu, right?
06:15 < bkero> I've built xanadu green ;)
06:15 < kanzure> I need a graph theoretic file system
06:15 < kanzure> virtual links aren't quite enough
06:15 < kanzure> I need linkbacks
06:16 < bkero> Haven't had the patience to set up xanadu gold
06:16 < bkero> Two-way links you mean?
06:16 < kanzure> yes
06:16  * bkero remembers reading nelsons rant against html
06:16 < kanzure> :)
06:17 < kanzure> One of the other issues that came up tonight was that all of these CAMs/CADs and 3D modeling interfaces all tremendously suck
06:17 < kanzure> Sketchup is apparently an improvement in a few ways or something
06:17 < kanzure> but I'm not convinced.
06:17 < bkero> We both have the same favorite restaurant
06:17 < kanzure> Chili's?
06:18 < bkero> Haha no
06:18 < kanzure> who is we?
06:18 < bkero> It's a little restaurant called The Spinnaker
06:18 < ybit> bkero: i used bitlbee for awhile, and was always complaining the lack of otr support :)
06:18 < bkero> Ted Nelson and I.
06:18 < bkero> ybit: otr?
06:18 < kanzure> ah
06:18 < ybit> off-the-record
06:18 < ybit> www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/
06:18 < bkero> Oh lol
06:18 < bkero> I don't use jabber enough for that to mater
06:18 < bkero> *xmpp
06:18 < kanzure> :)
06:18  * kanzure goes to wake up jer
06:19 < kanzure> Anyway, it occured to me tonight that you need to give the finger to 3D visualization/artistic interfaces
06:19 < kanzure> that's totally the wrong way to do it
06:19 < kanzure> you can't just magically hope that anything you draw can be directly correlated to the manufacturing processes
06:19 < kanzure> that's the /wrong/ way to go about doing this
06:19 < kanzure> it's of course the one that intuitively makes sense though
06:20 < kanzure> since you draw what you want, right?
06:20 < bkero> But it's not about doing it the right way, it's about disassociating 3d modeling with physical instantiation.
06:20 < kanzure> and then it's the engineer's fault for not making it happen
06:20 < kanzure> :p
06:20 < bkero> Because 3d modeleres don't work CNC machines.
06:20 < kanzure> right, they generate the instructions to compile it into the form that the machines can work with
06:20  * bkero apologises for his typos, he had a glass of wine in celebration of his accomplishments.
06:21 < kanzure> but you see, it's not 3D modeling that we really want
06:21 < bkero> The 3d modelers design valid objects that fit in 3d space with a slight hint of manufacturing optimization.
06:21 < kanzure> it's not "3D space" it's "API space for the machines" or something
06:22 < kanzure> aka you don't have a universal fabricator on the other end of your fabrication toolchain
06:22 < bkero> We've built self-replicating machines :)
06:22 < kanzure> cells
06:22 < kanzure> not reprap
06:22 < kanzure> don't give me the reprap bullshit
06:22 < kanzure> :)
06:22 < bkero> lol
06:22 < bkero> It's so fun to blame the TSA for destroying it though.
06:22 < kanzure> Hm?
06:23 < bkero> After the makers faire the TSA destroyed it
06:23 < bkero> While shipping
06:25 < ybit> wine, yum 
06:25 < bkero> http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/350879029/tsa-destroys-the-rep.html
06:25 < bkero> It's some of that Yellow Tail Merlot
06:25 < kanzure> bkero: The goal of SKDB is mostly to make a self-replicating machine the right way.
06:25 < bkero> Not bad for a $10 bottle of wine.  Definitely better than the $2.50 bottle I bought last time(I wanted to know what SUPEr cheap shitty wine tasted like)
06:25 < kanzure> What we're doing is sifting through metadata of manufacturing processes to look for "dependency loops" that represent self-replicating processes.
06:26 < bkero> Wouldn't you just get a lot of recursion that way?
06:27 < ybit> bebo vino tinto para mi cumpleaños... just a few days ago
06:27 < kanzure> bebo vino tinto?
06:27 < ybit> i drunk red wine
06:27 < ybit> (for my bday)
06:27 < kanzure> http://papers.cnl.salk.edu/PDFs/23%20Problems%20in%20Systems%20Neuroscience%202005-2921.pdf
06:27 < bkero> Wouldn't that be roja?
06:28 < kanzure> That's what I would think.
06:29 < ybit> not sure if that is acceptable, but red is most always pronounced tinto when referring to wine
06:29 < bkero> http://staff.osuosl.org/~bkero/lolreprap.png
06:29 < ybit> perhaps any liquid
06:30 < kanzure> Boing Boing lies
06:30  * ybit is n00b spanish speaker
06:30 < kanzure> I was pissed off when they started passing that press release around
06:30 < ybit> heh
06:30 < bkero> Heh
06:30 < ybit> (laughing at image)
06:30 < bkero> What else does it need?  To supply it's own fuel?
06:30 < kanzure> bkero: let's start with actually self-replicating
06:31 < ybit> is reading #hplusroadmap log
06:31 < kanzure> for instance, the microcontroller
06:31 < kanzure> all of those fabricational processes are linear
06:31 < kanzure> and not "self-replicating" and therefore the overall design is not self-replicating
06:32 < bkero> You're referring to the procedures in the microcontroller?
06:32 < kanzure> No, the manufacturing required to make the microcontroller.
06:33 < bkero> So you're talking about outside sources of inputs.
06:33 < kanzure> Inputs to what?
06:34 < kanzure> you have to actually *build the thing first*
06:34 < kanzure> and you haven't ...
06:34 < kanzure> s/you/they/
06:34 < bkero> Inputs for replication
06:36 < bkero> You're going to have to build something before it can self-replicate.  It's going to require some outside influence to bootstrap itself.
06:36 < kanzure> Correct.
06:36 < bkero> So you're saying that the reprap folks haven't built something that can create another of itself?
06:36 < kanzure> In a self-replicating system, such as an organism, the inputs are the materials that literally build the components required to process the inputs. This is not occuring in RepRap -- the materials required to build a microcontroller are not being dealt with at all. They're just hand-waved.
06:37 < kanzure> It certainly does thermoplastic .. I can't argue with that.
06:37 < kanzure> nor will I :)
06:37 < bkero> But it still requires external influence(IE replenishing parts supply)
06:38 < kanzure> What?
06:40 < bkero> So you're saying the inputs for a self-replicating system are components TO build them, not to build them out of?
06:40 < kanzure> rephrase
06:42 < bkero> You're saying that the inputs for a self-replicating system are used by the progenitor as tools to build the new organism?
06:42 < bkero> would you count mitosis as self-replication?
06:43 < kanzure> I think so, yes.
06:43 < kanzure> the problem with saying it that way is that it's harder to thnk about 
06:43 < kanzure> *think about
06:43 < kanzure> heh'
06:43 < bkero> I think the reprap guys took another angle.
06:44 < kanzure> rapid prototyper hacked into something it's not?
06:44 < bkero> They viewed self-replicating as all of the inputs are assembled to create a copy of itself
06:44 < bkero> Rapid prototyper saying "Look!  We can make it make itself!"
06:46 < kanzure> but they can't
06:46 < kanzure> it's not "making"
06:46 < kanzure> the "making" is the manufacturing
06:47 < bkero> It does make itself, but they have the replication part in the wrong spot.
06:48 < bkero> Have you done anything in regards to biological computing?
06:49 < bkero> One prototype is constructed from leech neurons, and is capable of performing simple arithmetic operations. 
06:49  * bkero wants some biological logic gates and transistors.
06:51 < kanzure> Winfree's lab?
06:51 < kanzure> :)
06:51  * kanzure was working on that in the lab here at UT
06:51 < kanzure> DNA logic gates called 'transcriptional switches'
06:51 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/mediawiki/index.php/Wittig_cohort
06:52 < bkero> Sweet
06:53 < kanzure> they are terribly slow and do everything *but* computation
06:54 < kanzure> http://ellingtonlab.org/
06:54 < kanzure> we were going to use them for molecular manufacturing and "online logic" for turning Turing patterns into crystalline structures during PCR
06:54 < kanzure> but anyway ..
06:59 < kanzure> http://www.theonion.com/content/video/pentagons_unmanned_spokesdrone
06:59 < kanzure> ^ that's worth the time
07:00 < bkero> brb landlord is keeping me at the olympics
07:18 < kanzure> hm ... http://www.theonion.com/content/video/study_most_children_strongly <-- you know, the kids are actually right
07:19 < kanzure> just not for the reasons these guys propose :)
07:53 < ybit> kanzure, an update on your open-rtms project?
08:17 < kanzure> NEED PARTS
08:17 < kanzure> please give
08:17 < kanzure> heh'
08:18 < kanzure> uhm, but I actually need to continue to collect papers really
08:18 < kanzure> and then do a massive paper review :)
08:18 < kanzure> there's a few that I neglected
08:18 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/~bbishop/docs/open-rtms/stuff_to_get.txt
08:22 < bkero> Nice shopping list
08:22 < kanzure> :)
08:22 < kanzure> the list was Superkuh's doing
08:22 < kanzure> actually
08:22 < kanzure> it was an extraction of his directory of papers
08:23 < kanzure> he already had them, but since he's limiting himself to 10 kbps I figured it'd be faster to just go get them myself
09:26 < kanzure> http://www.innerspacefoundation.org/advisers.htm
09:46 < kanzure> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HeUixe_Lpg water printer
09:48 < kanzure> http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12655 the boy mechanic - 700 (dangerous?) things for boys to do
09:58 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/2008-08-15.html
12:00 < kanzure> http://villagetelco.org/ 'an easy-to-use, scalable, standards-based, wireless, local, do-it-yourself, telephone company toolkit'
14:15 < kanzure> http://scyourway.nacse.org/conference/selection
14:15 < kanzure> I wonder if I can skip out on some school for this
14:20 < kanzure> haha
14:20 < kanzure> $600 in fees
14:20 < kanzure> retarded
14:23 < kanzure> Hm. I need a faculty sponsor.
17:19 < kanzure> fenn: suppose you're to give the finger to 3D modeling interfaces across all of the many applications and uses
17:19 < kanzure> what's the alternative?
17:20 < kanzure> I don't recall anything from history that served as a precursor to people saying "hey, let's make a gui for all of this!" really ... it was almost immediately that people went from "have the architect draw it out on paper" to "woah, what if he could do this on a computer"
17:48 < bkero> You're referring to the parts of the application that aren't the 2d representation of a 3d scene?
17:48 < kanzure> No, I don't think so.
17:48 < kanzure> it's not a '3d scene'
17:48 < kanzure> stop thinking jaa
17:48 < kanzure> *java
17:48 < bkero> I don't know java.
17:48 < kanzure> s/java/OOP/
17:49 < kanzure> Just as the map is not the territory, you really only need to be specifying constraints on the design space more than anything
17:49 < kanzure> but people don't think like this
17:49 < kanzure> they just draw a cup or something
17:50 < bkero> Aren't vector graphics about specifying constraints on design space?
17:50 < kanzure> Nope. They're about actual lines that are transmitted to the CNC machines to "make it happen".
17:50 < bkero> If you want to do that you can just do modeling in toolpath applications. :P
17:51 < bkero> Sorry, CAM software
17:51 < kanzure> Have you ever done non-3D modeling, like in a mathematical or computational sense?
17:51 < kanzure> There's a distinct difference that's worth noting. The 3D modeling stuff is kind of like telling yourself lies.
17:51 < bkero> I've done extradimensional modeling using POGL before.
17:52 < kanzure> of what?
17:52 < kanzure> oh, you mean 3D modeling
17:52 < kanzure> eerm
17:52 < kanzure> I mean, you mean "using the GPU"
17:52 < kanzure> heh'
17:53 < bkero> For display purposes
17:53 < bkero> Modeling hypercubes :P
17:53 < kanzure> Surely you've played with differential equations before?
17:53 < bkero> Sure
17:53 < kanzure> That's a form of modeling.
17:54 < bkero> Ok
17:56 < kanzure> When you draw a random curve in your CAD app, it's not the same thing as drawing a curve in your diff-eq solver because in the mathematical context you have axioms and general rules of topology or mapping between various types of numbers, real or otherwise, and whatever else you require. In CAD, you ignore all of that stuff and just kinda say "hey, this didn't turn out like I wanted it, wahh". all seems like a hack ..
17:57 < bkero> Such models don't have to follow physical laws, but have to obey most mathematical laws
17:57 < bkero> (IE you can't have negative absolute space)
20:19 -!- Splicer is now known as biopunk
21:13 < bkero> hplus