Virtual Thought

Found this article about neurochips that explains that some researchers in Europe created a silicon chip that can communicate with neurons through direct stimulation.

Then, I found this article about the first truly artificial life form: a simulated virus using more than a million digital atoms.

A friend of mine put it best:

I always have two simultaneous responses to stories like these: “That’s so cool!” and “We’re so fucked!”

This is a fantastic time to be alive. Lasers in the jungle somewhere.

Found a cool website about using binaural beats to hack one’s brain. I think I know what I’m doing this weekend.

The Strange Rumbler played a hand in this one:

Fuckin’ sweet.

So I’m reading through this Slashdot troll fest about coding and someone posts this neat article about the shuttle group’s coders at NASA and how their software is zero-defect. Surprisingly, according to the article, the group may produce what is the most expensive-per-line program in the world (420,000 lines with a $35 million dollar budget) with impressive stats like ”...[t]he last 11 versions of this software had a total of 17 errors.” I mean, wow. That’s pretty cool. I really respect the hell out of NASA, gotta admit.

Read the article. This group uses what sounds to me like a waterfall approach: lots of up-front planning, lots of documentation, rigid process… and it’s totally working for them. What does that mean for us agile folks? Are we totally wrong?

Nah. I’m very much a “tools that suit the job” kind of person instead of a “this is the best tool ever” kind of person. But it is interesting to point out when people insist that waterfall doesn’t work. Huh.

Moments like these are why I have a blog.

In a semi-random poke around iTunes I discovered two bands… one that is pretty cool and one that I absolutely fucking adore. Freezepop has won my heart and stolen my soul. What a great band. Jesus. “parlez-vous freezepop?” is running on loop in my head. It’s like this band’s very existence in this universe made a small hole in my brain… and now that I’ve found them the hole is filled with plasticky synth-pop effervescence.

Then there’s this:

I need to hang onto that.

Then there’s this:

This guy rules. Go check him out.

I’m gonna go play with the twenty or so free VSTIs I just downloaded…

This is badass!

I have found the solution to loving my Mac but wanting to develop on a PC.

So apparently there’s this app called Synergy which lets one person sync two computers, each with their own monitor… so that someone (say, me) can effectively have one keyboard and one mouse, but two monitors and two computers. Dragging the mouse cursor to the edge of the screen of one system (Windows) will move the cursor onto the second system (Mac). Genius! There’s even a Synergy GUI for help setting it up on the Mac.