Category: observation

AI

Saw AI Artificial Intelligence for the first time last night. What an intensely moving and thought provoking film. As a fan of ‘hard science fiction’: my saying is that the sadest thing about dying is that you miss the future; and science fiction is the best way to experience what you miss. The movie is an interesting take on the man-machine (orgo-mecha) relationship and potentially where it is heading.

MINI

Back at work after 2 weeks off. Strangely enough, exactly 17 years ago today I started work at an Apple reseller in Adelaide.

MINI Cooper: North American Car of the Year. It is such a shame that the journos at Wheels in Australia had to give the Car of the Year to a mere Ford…

Go and see the documentary-movie Bowling for Columbine. Whilst Michael Moore has chosen footage and interviews to promote his point of view, it is an interesting take on guns and violence: especially in the US.

Aluminium Foil

Nick’s Christmas Tip: Wrap your presents in Aluminium Foil (Alfoil). I have more than halved my gift wrap time this year. No sticky tape, just wrap. And it looks cool. Thanks to Jack Osbourne for this one!

Amazonian Piano

The Piano Two years ago, an eccentric explorer John Blashford-Snell delivered a baby grand to a remote Amazonian tribe who’d had little contact with ‘civilisation’. Late last month, he and a team returned to tune it – and to see if they had learned to play it. Andrew Brown, one of the tuners on the expedition, reveals what they found.

Thoughts

Something I remember thinking, if not saying, was that the whole NeXT heritage of easier software development tools was going to give Apple a significant competitive advantage with software. We are seeing a plethora of MacOS X based “digital hub” (or digital lifestyle) mini-applications tied to a web-services style backed (.mac) I am sure all of these, being MacOS X native, use the Cocoa (aliasYellow Box, alias NeXT frameworks) environment. The key to the volume of application production.