Flickr - Parasite

Parasite, originally uploaded by Peter Hajas.

One of my favorite shots, this one was a real sacrifice (I'm serious here!)

I had to actually let this thing suck out my blood for about 4 minutes before I grabbed this shot. As I'm using a point-and-shoot camera, it's very hard to get the correct focal length, so it's sort of me wrestling with "Macro" mode on the Canon Powershot SD850 IS. Anyways, check out the shot! This was the mosquito practically full of blood. The shot taken about half a second after this was just my bare hand, so I was lucky to grab this one before she flew away!

Wii Straps arrive - nice Nintendo!

When I got a Wii by waiting in line for 18 hours, I enjoyed it to no end. I also was a big time enforcer of strap wearing by anybody using my Wii or Wii remotes (WiiMote?). I played Wii Sports several times with friends who forgot to wear them, but there weren't any incidents. However, during a Red Steel match, that all changed...

I was The Masked Man (coolest guy ever), perusing around the Docks level, shooting desperately at my friends. Trying to slash one of them with the nunchuk, I threw it down in my hand and (accidentally) let go of it. Flying through the air at insane speeds, it hit the table some 6 inches later, bouncing up and falling down next to the table. My WiiMote, considering it was hooked up to the nunchuk, fell with it, thankfully attached to the wrist strap. Recovering the instruments of my virtual destruction, I contemplated how the wrist strap looked fragile and could probably break under pressure, as I had read online. Turns out I was right. Nintendo initiated a free strap replacement policy where, for free, they'd ship you as many wrist straps as you had remotes. Considering I had four, I placed my order late December.

After a little over two weeks (but not bad turnaround time for free stuff!), I got my magic straps in the mail. I haven't hooked them up yet, but it's obvious the string is thicker.

Check out more photos in my Flickr photoset!

Telluride Technology Festival 2006 - David Sinclair

(random comments are bolded)
(all quotes and ideas expressed in this post are intellectual property of David Sinclair)
David Sinclair begins his presentation with talking about how humbled he is with his introduction and being "famed" per say. Sinclair got a PhD in molecular biology and got interested in aging. Sinclair was interested in aging pioneers, already working on understanding the aging process. Sinclair says that he's an associate professor at a Harvard Medical school. This research isn't not just going to benefits rich old white people, it can change the way we do medicine. There are genetic pathways in our bodies that defend ourselves from disease. If you activate these, you can reverse negative effect of diseases.

Sinclair was, early on, challenged with people who thought that aging wasn't a true science and that it shouldn't be studied. Sinclair says, though, that we are now at the breakthrough cutting edge of science. Sinclair says that his job today is to convince people that topical cream isn't science, and he can make a difference with molecular biology.

What Sinclair wants us to put aside is our skepticism about aging science. Aging has undergone a revolution in how we understand it. If an age associated illness occurs in less than 50% of people, it's a disease. If it's more than 50%, it's "aging". Sinclair feels this is very arbitrary. Sinclair feels that aging is a set of horrible diseases, and he feels that we should get rid of them. He feels we can extend the lifespan into 120s and 130s. He thinks it would be a nice world, with some social impact (obviously). Some people are disposed to live a long time, Sinclair says, giving an example of father and son (100 and 70 respectively). Sinclair claims that there are genes we can track down to increase age, and study simpler organisms to begin this aging study. The old view of aging was that our bodies are like automobiles, we wear out and die. By this analogy, it's almost possible to thing of an aging-fixing pill. Even if you had a pill, it would be hard to convince the public.

The goal of the research of the past couple years has been to find these aging genes, to locate what makes people actually age. If you restrict the calories you give rats, they live dramatically longer. You restrict the calories, the longer you extend the lifespan. Can we eat things that would restrict the appetite? It works on Yeast, Nematodes, Flies, Mice and probably (heh) Humans and primates. Our bodies have innate defenses against aging and multiple diseases, they're governed by the same genes too. Some people are not going to wait for this technology and are just restricting their calories now. It doesn't affect mental acuity, it improves it.

In this fasting diet, you're protected much better than eating a lot. One of the things Sinclair is worrying about is that you may be sterile after taking his pill, but so far, no side effects. SIR2 is one of the genes Sinclair is interested in. It taught him that the pace of aging is regulated by a few key genes, not thousands.

Yeast cells are perfect to study because their genetics are very similar to our genetic structure. Yeast cells only produce 20 offspring before they die, and Sinclair wanted to study this relationship with aging. Was this true with other organisms? Sinclair found that SIR2 controlled aging in very complex organisms, so they'd live 30-50% longer with extra SIR2 genes. Sinclair thought that they had an awesome learning experience with this SIR2 gene. SIR2 is an enzyme, and it tells things in the cell when to do things. Sinclair wanted to find a molecule so that we could eat something rather than using gene therapy. Sinclair thinks that the SIR2 is almost absolutely in the human structure, and SIRT1 is a very similar gene in us. We don't yet know that SIRT1 will extend our lifespan. Sinclair is confident that we can extend our lifespan with SIRT1 genes. SIRT1, says Sinclair, is very key in solving the diabetes problem. Sinclair shows us studies done with mice, very interesting experiments into genes and transgenic mice. What Sinclair has just discovered is that SIRT1 prevents Cancer in mice. It keeps cells alive, and cancer is proliferation, SIRT1 can give you better protection against Cancer in addition to various other diseases. If we switch on the SIRT1 gene, the mice that didn't have it had a ton of tumors (in Cancer prone mice). The ones with the excessive SIRT1 genes have little to no tumors, it can supress Cancer. This is huge, says Sinclair. Sinclair wants to know if we can make drugs that can treat old age Sinclair can now create the SIRT1 enzyme artificially and looked for molecules that would hyperactivate the enzyme. They found a whole class of molecules that did this and prolonged life in the yeast cells. Rezveratrol, says Sinclair, is a great molecule for exciting the SIR2 and SIRT1 enzymes. It's produced by plants when they're under stress, interestingly enough. The plants are presumably using this molecule to help it survive in harsh conditions. Merely eating this molecule prolongs lifespan by at least 10% and increased proliferation.

Sinclair is now talking about more, harder to blog topics. I can assure you that it's an interesting talk, one I'm glad to attend.

Telluride Technology Festival 2006 - Eric Allman

(random comments are bolded)
(all quotes and ideas expressed in this post are intellectual property of Eric Allman)
Standing in front of the stage with his bright orange shirt, Eric Allman humbly responds to a dramatic introduction given by a Tech Fest founder. Allman explains that his talk is called "Meditations on Messaging", starting with homing pidgeons and the Greeks and Romans.

Early forms of messaging where FTP and things like that. Allman calls Ray Tomalson (spelling?) the true founder of email, but Allman authored SendMail. He also made a Star Trek non-graphical program, early utility tools, SysLog,

In 1974, Allman was at Berkely, working on database research. He used a relational database (rare at the time) system, and he was supposed to be doing work on it. Somewhere along the line, they got a small DARPA grant, VDH Interface was created (a slow, slow modem). He says that everyone at the department wants to send ARPAnet email. Sharing the 256 user accounts had to be done, and the amount of memory was 112 Kbytes, nothing at all. Someone had built a network at Berkely to send files. Allman thought he could write software to tie these things together, DeliverMail. He learned that lots of people had similar problems. Allman says it was an awesome time at the university, he met someone who did their best work when avoiding something else. The first Berkely software distro was a PASCAL interpreter. DARPA decided they needed a single platform to manage research on the net, it was running on assorted machines and needed to be unified. Berkely got the contract from DARPA, and whilst this was happening, ARPAnet was transfering to the internet. From Allman's point of view, email was a first-class protocol (SMTP, that kinda stuff). While Allman was working on his database, he was called on as the obvious person (post DeliverMail) that during nights+weekends, he would work on this DARPA mail. He changed the name to "SendMail". Allman mentioned that the original mail client had IM capabilities, very cool. He didn't implement these because the technical text was way too cumbersome for the user. After this, "nothing" happened in the internet for the next decade (until 1996/1997). April 12th, 1994 will live in fame, says Allman. Lawyers in Texas sent out an ad to every newsgroup on the net, the beginning of spam itself!

This, Allman says, brings us to the talk on spam. The first spam that Allman could find reference to was in 1904 on the telegraph system. ARPAnet in 1987, someone sent out a message about their new hardware program to every single user on ARPAnet (the worst part was he wasn't technically adept and it was a disaster).

Economics of spam: On the internet, it's really cheap to send a message, but relatively expensive to recieve the message (storage, etc.). The sending cost is not zero, but it is very very nominal. Compared to the physical world, it was a huge advantage (no materials, etc). Sending out an ad, in SnailMail, is a waste. In spam, spammers have every incentive to send out as many emails as possible "because somebody might be interested in that body enhancement product".

What do we do? Put in filters. This increased the imbalance, making it more expensive to recieve this, all the cost is paid by the recipient. What's really expensive is human processing time, it's worth it to "throw silicon at the problem". Ultimately, the battle will be lost. When Allman started working on mail, it was not a reliable protocol. Things got lost, a professor's grant mail was lost (ouch!). Allman put a lot of work into making SendMail hyper reliable. The spam filters can now actually eat legitimate emails, a "serious bummer" so says Allman. Allman says we can send the cost back to the senders, a few years ago he was pushing it extensively. Computational postage, the concept, is great. This would be worthless as an anti-spam technique. Spammers have close to infinite resources, it costs them almost nothing too. The other thing about spam is that it was getting nastier. Early spam was snake oil advertisements. The next step up was the Nigerian spam (evolution in action?) and now phishing. Phishing is different because it tends to be more down-to-earth than the 419 spams (Nigerian scams), it's much more subtle and effective, much more of an issue. It's a flat-out crime. Identity theft is the gift that keeps on giving. $800 per person, on average, if you're phished. Spearphishing is targeted phishing, to target you with other information. People trust things that have their personal information on it. Spearphishing will be the next major problem. Allman says the phishers are getting very smart with their emails. Balanced with all this are legitimate businesses that want email access badly. It's a valuable market message, whether or not you want to see it, but it can still be opt-out spam. Europe has gone into an opt-in system. Some ads are cool, like the new tech catalogs, says Allman. The economics are wrong, and we're getting to the point where people are talking about lowering the accuracy rate. Spam filters can't tell if it's been requested or not. DKIM is the idea (by Allman) that it's email identification, identity based filtering. DKIM is a basic signature that uses a public key, if it's signed by DKIM, then the signer had the access to the private key (they're who they claim to be). We note that spammers do this, we respond, they respond, we respond. An endless arms race. DKIM solves only a tiny part of the problem, it isn't enabling technology, people will make new tools. We'll get out of the arms race. DKIM can prove who it came from but not not who it came from, emails could (without the DKIM) be forged.

Beyond spam, says Allman. Someone wanted to make a penpal system, and Allman thought that was so cool (emailing between Chicago and Moskow children). There's a guy Allman knows, anonymous in CA, parents live overseas. He doesn't see them a lot and his father is having medical problems (watches TV a lot, not mobil or anything, lack of stimulation). The friend says "wouldn't it be great if I could interact with them on a daily basis?". He sets it up SSH style, VoIP, Video Conferencing and installs the box in their living room. Now, he routinely visits his father virtually, improving his father's mental state. His dad's getting better, and he's getting closer to his father. Here's a bad story, says Allman: Allman says we're so centered on our cellphones, it's antisocial. "Turn off the damn thing", he says. The ugly, now, says Allman. Now, in this country, the 1st ammendment allows us to speak freely, but the 4th ammendment lets us shut up. This isn't a high school civics class, but this limits gov't rights to limit our communications (mail, phone calls). It's worked for our history, because of the need for physical access. The digital world comes along, and the government passes a law CALEA that requires "tap points" to be present, it now covers VoIP and IM (YAY!). The gov't can now do this remotely and watch people on the ISPs. And honest, they won't use it without a warrant. This is pretty scary stuff. And now there are the NSA "secret rooms" where they are keeping track of every piece of data. This is kinda scary, says Allman. How do we know our phone calls aren't being covered for "scary words" by algorithms? It's reduced our privacy! But, hey, doesn't everything? The phone did, email did, IM did. How bad is this? I've got nothing to hide, I'm no terrorist! Most people don't care about their privacy, but the people who care won't do something about it because it's inconvenient and expensive.

People, Allman says, like to receive legitimate messages. We will see less spam, but more valuable marketing messages (so called "wanted" spam). Ultimately, spam and phishing will never ever go away.

Telluride Technology Festival 2006 - Bob Sproull

(random comments are bolded)
(all quotes and ideas expressed in this post are intellectual property of Robert Sproull)
"This morning I'd like to introduce you to two remarkable men...there will be a good deal of physics with mystery." Bob Sproull, an older man, begins his presentation. "The first person is Joseph C. R. Lick (spelling?)", his interest was in the brain and "human factors" in computers. His imagination far outpaced the then current computer ability. He replaced Bash processing for a more fluid UI. ARPA was a response to Sputnik, before NASA was created. It was preserved as a quick response agency. In late 1962, a small program was established called "Command and Control Research" for military command applications. We changed the name to reflect information and processing, justifying Defense Department funds, but exploring other computer alternatives for this data. When Lick left ARPA, he nominated Sullivan (inventor of SketchPad) to take his place. ARPAnet evolved into the internet, and the new ARPA is DARPA (you need defense in the title, Sproull jokes). The current problem is energy. An "ARPAe" has been proposed for Energy. DARPA now has nearly complete freedom.

The second genius Sproull mentions is Hans L Brick Beta (spelling?). He left his mark through publications and students. Beta was a physics major who applied quantum theory before he was 20 years of age, his handbooks are still in use today. He won the Nobel Prize for a quantum study on the sun. He then contributed to the microwave radar. Beta continued to turn out great paper, at age 93 he gave speeches, he died at 98 a year and a half ago. Beta's life coincided with the quantum century, he mastered and created many down-to-earth applicable theories.

Sproull has two objectives: (1) To demystify Quantum Theory and (2) to prepare you for an onslaught of books that claim to explain the universe.

Sproull then begins a deeply technical talk, about various theories and predictions of physics. It's an interesting talk, no doubt, but rather hard to blog.

Telluride Technology Festival 2006 - Robert Winter

(random comments are bolded)
(all quotes and ideas expressed in this post are intellectual property of Robert Winter)
As I sit in this under-seated venue, I am listening to Robert Winter enthusiastically talk about a problem with education, he wants to write programs for people aged "12-dead", which is pretty clever. My previous blog (around 130 hits a day) seems to have been deleted, this makes me sad. Hopefully, I can regain my previous blogging status. Mr. Winter needs to write for skilled age, not just normal age, to get a useful program made. He's discovered that the divide for education (high and low culture) is destroyed online, people explore the key ideas behind things. He worked with Bob Stein, whose notes I will upload soon, on interactive CD-ROM software. He's about to show us a program with 22000+ files, 18000+ content files, 60000+ words. He doesn't have to worry about "there's no place to put everything", he can put in whatever will work. He tries to create programs that are author created, but user-driven. "There are a limitless number of paths to follow." Mr. Winter has spent 4000 hours on the presentation and program he's about to show us, truly a triumph in complexity, detail, and ideas. His whole idea is that his programs are all interconnected, a web/network if you will. His program starts up with the sound of an 1895 train, majestic music follows with a few images of turn-of-the-century idols. These icons are clickable, and you can then read about them, trains, statue of liberty, women, farris wheel, instruments, it's a table of contents. Clicking on an icon will forward you to a page dedicated to that idea with text and pictures about that idea. There are video clips you can watch, revealing that this is indeed a DVD-ROM program. Winter wanted it to be a themed-project, so key-ideas and sub-ideas are named "Main-Line" and "Side-Trips", the Side Trips are for non-linear learners. Clicking on something will have a little sprite of Winter begin to talk to the learner about the item. Everything in the program is scalable, and you can non-linearly explore the information. You can watch videos of owls with 180 degree head turns and ear-piercing screeches, all about Prague, the city where a 19th century man named Dvorak lived. The DVD focuses on Dvorak and his music, pleasent dramatic pieces that tie the rustic frontier-esque project together. Various links in the text open up a page, Wiki-style, it'll also highlight the text that you're looking for. Winter jokes that, if he dies, he wants to be remembered for this. He says people came to America for various reasons, and links to "projects" are supplied for students. Clearly an intellectual production. He refers to the green hyperlinks as "hot". He has various artworks in the western-themed program for children to draw on a piece of paper. Clicking on things displays paintings, and there is AV media for almost every idea and facet of Dvorak's life. If Dvorak liked a certain type of bird and put it in his music, you can see the picture of the bird, listen to its call, and listen to the music. You're impulsive in this program, says Winter. All of this information can be retrieved instantly. Listen to sound-clips of interviews about Dvorak taped 45 years ago in a discussion, truly get a good idea for how Dvorak was. Winter then shows how you can skip through music with titles and headings, to listen to the differences in various majors and tempos, being able to grab sections that are 10 minutes apart instantly for comparison. He plays a sound clip everyone in the audience has heard, and explains that kids can now explore these familiar sounds. Winter has fused sound, technology and learning to create a majestic learning application. It turns out that the past twenty minutes of sound, video, pictures and text is in one of the 10 or so "sections" or icons, the one we chose being Dvorak. Winter accesses the "Women" file, and you can listen to certain works, which are truly amazing. The simple ability to tie music and picture together with your eyes and ears is an amazing experience, truly an awesome way to learn. He plays a video of modern-day Carnegie hall, for the children who are interested in what the theater is and was like. You can pull up individual instruments and listen to their sound in the orchestra in different pieces, amazing. You can then watch video of modern-day orchestra instruments play the sections of these pieces. Winter jokes that he has another hour to show us, even though he has about six minutes, he's an excellent speaker. "You can always 'break out' on things you don't know" or understand, comments Winter. He says he's collected information for 30 years, astounding. 15000-20000 hyperlinks in the program, he says.