Yoz Grahame's Cheerleader: Oh, randomness

June 03, 2003

Oh, randomness

I installed Haystack. It looks amazingly intriguing but it's slow as hell (on my 1.1Ghz Celeron + 512MB RAM laptop) and doesn't come with a decent tutorial (there are links to sample data but they 404) so I just spend a while clicking randomly on stuff. It's an interface that tries hard to be polished and friendly but betrays its academic, geeky origins in the total-information-overload layout. I'm not giving up on it by any means, but I think I'll just put it aside for the moment...
Incidentally, if you try it, be warned that the first time you run the app it precompiles everything, which takes a good ten minutes. However, you are treated to some fantastic component names in the "Loading..." box: "Navigation Ontology", "UI Continuations", "Natural Language Annotation UI". Reminds me of "Balancing Domestic Coefficients" and "Calibrating Personality Matrix" from The Sims.
... speaking of which...
... I'm currently going through the temporary addiction to the latest Simcity, something that grips me for two weeks with every version before I get suddenly bored. One thing I'm finding odd about the new one is that, due to the automatic road-planning help it gives you when zoning, traffic problems are almost non-existent. This would be a good thing except that there seems to be no motivation for providing public transport - I once made a bus network and it went totally unused. But it sounds like this'll be addressed in the Rush Hour expansion pack.
A ton of DAAP clients and servers. DAAP is the streaming protocol that Apple introduced with iTunes 4 and then hurriedly restricted with 4.01. (Sorry, make that "tried to restrict").
BitTorrent is suddenly popping up everywhere. (I've become a rabid advocate.) Documentation on the home page is sparse but this FAQ deals with most questions. I currently use the burst! client, but this Java all-in-one deal looks cool too.
I was trying to explain the Korean Starcraft scene to someone. This is a good overview.
What the hell's wrong with me? I see the new Archos wonder-toy and the first thing I think is: Does it do Bluetooth?
If the previously-mentioned Media Player Classic (updated!) isn't shiny enough for you, JetAudio looks like another good everything-player. (I haven't tried it. Shinyness and shitness seem directly correlated in media players. You have been warned.)
In last night's profession-teamed University Challenge, Paxo asked, "Which programming language was created by Guido van Rossum at the Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica in the Netherlands and was named after a 1970's British comedy series?" (The team of vicars guessed "Porridge?" But they still beat the lawyers by 150 points.)

Posted by Yoz at June 03, 2003 06:22 PM | TrackBack

Comments

erm, on http://haystack.lcs.mit.edu/downloads.html third point "Haystack is slow"

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