It's like a real videoblog. Topic: stickers.
There is a link to Cat and Girl in the sidebar (the Not for Babies picture). Or you could click that link I just made.
A blog? About breakfast?
I am in love.
It is called breakfast blogger.
It’s in the sidebar.
Original pre-move comment from me:
Breakfast for breakfast: coffee. Breakfast for lunch: pancakes or waffles. Breakfast for dinner: eggs.
Original pre-move comment from Imagine:
People eat, like, food before noon? Not during the week? Yeah ? I didn’t realize.No, no—I’ll just have a latte, thanks.
Original pre-move comment from Brian:
the first cup of coffee is breakfast. breakfast blogger is fabulous, thanks for the link. Now I am jonesing for hobo hash plate from Northside, big time.
Original pre-move comment from transiit:
Breakfast and I don’t intersect terribly often, but I’ve got to say, good biscuits and sawmill gravy can be a thing of wonder.
QuackCon 2008?
You can assume that if I’m not blogging I’m busy with other projects. Of late, I have been crocheting socks, noodling about on the ORG, and making stupid videos.
A tight-knit group of duckies have decided to try to mount a convention on the anniversary of the end of The Show. We’ve selected a few cities we think would be a good meet-up place and we are collecting votes through September 10. We’re talking analysis of lodging, entertainment, transportation, accessibility, etc., during the weekend of March 14-17ish.
The line-up:
- Austin, TX
- Albuquerque, NM
- Chicago, IL
- New York, NY
- Los Angeles, CA
Got any thoughts on those places? Let me know.
We are currently counting votes in a project on the ORG and tallying them in a Google Spreadsheet. You can see a live update as we update the stats here. As we get closer to the deadline and a narrower race we’ll do some more investigation into venues, etc.
harried thoughts on simulation
Another dose of “Quick! Give me an idea!”
Is a simulation anything more than scientific fantasy?
In the 1990s, when everything was “cyber” and “virtual,” I remember being distinctly unimpressed by “virtual reality” and flight simulators and the like. This was largely because I spent a good deal of my time reading, and what I made up was always more interesting than anything that was being shown to me on a computer or TV screen. I like video games (I have a special place in my geek heart for Myst) but have never minded them not looking real.
I am not alone. Any research into the Uncanny Valley will tell you that people have a visceral reaction to things that look really really real, but don’t quite make it. The closer to real things get, the more skeeved out we get. Little round dancing robots are awesome, but get an android-like automaton and you just feel…weird. Supposedly once robots and other non-human entities cross that valley into the indistinguishable-from-people realm, the weird feeling goes away, and we like them again. Not really provable yet, since we’re just starting to create machines that approach the other side of the Valley.
We don’t mind cyborgs, or prosthetics. (Small children tend to stare at people with obvious prosthetics, but that’s not so hard to understand.) Cyborgs are awesome, and those cheetah-like running legs are almost more awesome. And, arguably, cyborg-esque. But my point is, perfect simulation is still a scientific fantasy. Until our computers and homes and workplaces are run by nanobots working like cells and molecules at incredible speeds, reproducing themselves and hivelike yet mimicking a type of intelligence we can’t separate from our own, simulation has a ways to go. That said, wouldn’t even robot or a world built to behave like ours still be a simulation?
I wonder if that shiver you get in the Uncanny Valley is a biological reaction to otherness, or your brain’s way of saying, “This is weird. I’m not fooled, but what is it that keeps me from being fooled?”
Other food for thought from this round:
Original pre-move comment from britta:
The way I understand the Uncanny Valley is that it’s part of our general pattern-matching ability to tell when something is “wrong” with another person – a mentally or physically sick person has something “off” about them that we can detect pretty quickly. This is useful, so it’s a trait that we’ve evolved with. I’m not sure if this is the accepted theory or something I just read somewhere, though.Anyway, once we’ve made simulation too good, we’ll get all sorts of horrible existential problems about what is real and what isn’t (if we haven’t already). Yay Baudrillard!