Kookaburra

Richard Feynman: The Douglas Robb Memorial Lectures

Richard Feynman: The Douglas Robb Memorial Lectures - a set of streaming lectures from the late great nobel prize winning physicist.

"A set of four priceless archival recordings from the University of Auckland (New Zealand) of the outstanding Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman - arguably the greatest science lecturer ever. Although the recording is of modest technical quality the exceptional personal style and unique delivery shine through.

Feynman gives us not just a lesson in basic physics but also a deep insight into the scientific mind of a 20th century genius analysing the approach of the 17th century genius Newton.

For the young scientist, brought up in this age of hi-tech PC / PowerPoint-based presentations, we also get an object lesson in how to give a lecture with nothing other than a piece of chalk and a blackboard. Furthermore we are shown how to respond with wit and panache to the technical mishaps that are part-and-parcel of the lecturer's life."

Hybrid Center: New guide portal for Hybrids

The Union of Concerned Scientists is promoting its Hybrid Center.
It's a great place to research hybrids like the Toyota Prius and get 'under the hood' at the technology.

Handwriting tips

On the basis that it's never too late to improve here are some handwriting tips. My own handwriting is so bad that I learnt to type (well sort of) so I could actually get my work marked at Uni. Have I improved? Well it doesn't matter so much as I mainly type these days but there is still something deliciously tactile when putting pen to paper.

Censored A-Bomb Dispatches published

CBS News | Censored A-Bomb Dispatches Printed:

An American journalist who sneaked into Nagasaki soon after the Japanese city was leveled by a U.S. atomic bomb found a "wasteland of war" and victims moaning from the pain of radiation burns in downtown hospitals.

Censored 60 years ago by the U.S. military, George Weller's stories from the atom bombed-city surfaced this month in a series of reports in the national Mainichi newspaper.

A woman at a hospital "lies moaning with a blackish mouth stiff as though with lockjaw and unable to utter clear words," her legs and arms covered with red spots, Weller wrote.

Close your mind. Forget it all. Don't think about the possibilities of it happening again. Sleep tight in your beds. Don't watch "Dr Strangelove" and let's hope some nutter doesn't set about bringing forth the end times.

DevonThink Professional (beta) debuts

I've been a big fan of DevonThink for some time now. Think of it as your personal knowledge management system. Anything you collect and create can be indexed via DevonThink. It really delivers when you need to find and organise information.

It beats an operating system for these task (that includes Mac OS X and WIndows XP). While Mac OS X (Tiger) has Spotlight it really only helps with finding files, and then in a simplistic fashion. It does nothing to help you organise the files.

The DevonThink search is claimed to be faster and deeper than Spotlight. I really do value the ways in which DevonThink helps you find what you are looking for AND related articles. It helps you bring order to chaos by suggesting where best to categorise documents. This uses AI to classify documents and create 'see also' references.

It's the closest I have found to a system which focuses on content and takes away the burden of filing structure. Essentially you can throw all of your work into DevonThink and have it make sense of it for you.

DevonThink Professional seems even faster and has enormous potential for tapping into more power with AppleScript.

Can you tell I am excited?

Spotlight has its place, and it really is a good step forward at the OS level, but DevonThink is much closer to solving the real issue of delivering powerful knowledge management for the rest of us.

You can download the DevonThink Professional beta now (free for use until sometime in August)

WineHQ on Apple, Intel, Wine, and Darwine

See Apple, Intel, Wine and Darwine for a Wine insiders view of the new opportunities driven by Apple's move to Intel.

Aussies over invested in residential real estate

At last some date to back my view that Australians are crazy (really crazy) about the degree to which they invest in residential property.

Here's an extract from Ross Gittins, Economics Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald

Housing boom runs out of puff - Ross Gittins - Opinion - theage.com.au:
And consider this. In Britain, just 2 per cent of households own
residential property they rent out. In the United States and Canada
it's 6.5 per cent. In Australia, no less than 17 per cent of
households also rent to other households.
It's this distortion that holds the greatest threat to us from
the property boom - the risk that, rather than continuing to slowly
deflate, the property bubble could yet end with a frightening
bang.

If you've got some cash invest it in something much more productive - commercial property, shares. BTW, I have been spruiking this line since at least 2001. Much more liquid, more in demand (now) but potentially more risky - though no one ever seems to do strong calcs on the real risks of housing prices plateauing and declining. You can manage your risk - just tailor your portfolio accordingly. (see Dimensional Funds)

Time travelling plants

An amazing revelation - a time travelling plant. There's is still hope for the carrot seeds I have been meaning to plant for years. My dad's 30+ year old Rhubarb planting pales in insignificance. Now if only those plant seeds had real intelligence and update us on life 2000+ years ago.

Ancient seed sprouts date palm. 13/06/2005. ABC News

Researchers in Israel say they have succeeded in growing a date palm from a seed that is 2,000 years old. The seed was unearthed during an excavation of the ancient mountain fortress of Masada 30 years ago and is thought to be the oldest seed ever germinated.

Researchers in Jerusalem have managed to germinate the seed and grow it to a 30-centimetre high plant. The baby date palm has been nicknamed Methuselah, after a biblical figure said to have lived for nearly 1,000 years. The researchers' achievement may turn out to be more significant than simply bringing an ancient seed back to life.

The discoverers of Methuselah have now sent some of its leaves off for DNA analysis with the hope it might have medicinal uses that are missing in modern cultivated varieties.

- BBC

Wine & AppTel ... hmm

After a little further pondering I can only applaud Steve Job's brilliance. By making this announcement and supporting Mac OS X on Intel and PowerPC Steve keeps his options open on what chips to use in the future. If IBM have a 'breakthrough' he can ride that wave. If Intel keep winning the MIPS race then we wins again.

Instinctively I said, "Wow, Virtual PC will sure run fast." On further thought why run Windows? Mac OS X is a great OS, who needs to run mutiple OS on a single machine? What is needed, for some, is the ability to run Windows apps on top of Mac OS X.

If Apple emulate the Windows API on Mac OS X then WinTel apps will just run. Ok they won't be provide the complete Mac experience but the basics will be provided for - file access, network access and printing. There is no real reason why Apple couldn't pull this off.

If you like it's converting/cloning Wine for Mac OS X. What's Wine? See below.

From Wine HQ:

Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X and Unix.

Think of Wine as a compatibility layer for running Windows programs. Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely free alternative implementation of the Windows API consisting of 100% non-Microsoft code, however Wine can optionally use native Windows DLLs if they are available.

Now of course you're not going to run Windows apps on Mac OS X while there are good Mac OS X alternatives. Why run MS Office for Windows while there is a Mac OS X native version? Apple will need to manage this well so as to not discourage developers from developing for the Mac natively.

Welcome AppTel

Well Apple has finally decided it's time to move on from IBM's PowerPC chips to Intel chips. It's goodbye PowerMac and hello AppTel (new term seemingly coined by Macintouch), though it will take some time to change all new machines over to Intel.

The new AppTel machines are still some time off and will be a different build to your stand WinTel box. Yes there will be Intel Inside but also a whole lot of Mac specific stuff to ensure a Mac remains a Mac and despite a heart transplant will still offer the best out of the box experience anywhere.

As for Intel Inside ... hmm ... maybe that means any Windows emulation required will happen a whole lot faster.

Apart from some short term sales stalling (as people wait for AppTel) this only seems to be good news for Apple and their customers. Let's hope Apple's promises to developers (minimal rework to compile for AppTel) are true.

As for any sort of shock from Mac diehards I don't see it happening. Apple have moved before from 68000 to RISC-based PowerPC and now to Intel. No big deal. The move from System 6 to System 7, and from System 9 to Mac OS X were a lot more pain than we're likely to see out of this change. Bring it on.

Meanwhile the 'Tel in WinTel has become less loyal. They've been busy pushing Linux in Asia according to these reports.

Update: The major shock from WWDC (as the AppTel announcement was mooted) was that Steve Jobs had abandoned his black turtleneck, choosing a long sleeve black T-Shirt instead! Urk!