Random Links to Random Things

I guess we'll start with the newest finds and work back, figuring in threads of thought as I go along.

I acctually was in the process of getting some work done today, at work no less, when the president of the company and our HR person stopped by. Thier in town for some big gala thing. And since I've never met either, I figured I'd talk to them. Nice women, and I don't regret the conversation, but little work got done when they left. Instead, I started wondering around web sites. In the process I came across an interesting little comic called, Business As Usual. It's fun, you should go read it. There isn't much, but may be there'll be more.
Something about the comic reminds me of Ein Stuck Natur. And that's another comic you should read.
Back to BAU though, Kate also gets props for attending Radford Univ. Which was the first college I went to. I only lasted three semesters and only got 15 credits out of it, but oh well. I was still there.

On the tech front, Lisa Rein has video footage of Alan Kay's presentation at the Emerging Tech Conference a few weeks ago. His presentation was broken up into three areas:

1) Pointing out how little has changed in software over the last 40 years. This was depressing. Basically, we still don't have access to software that the people at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center invented back in the 60's. People just forgot about all the cool things that PARC invented and decided it wasn't important. Well, damn them!

2) A demo of kids (around 10-11 years old) working with Small Talk. Building little systems and playing with them. The point was to teach these kids about science in a way that wasn't just memorizing facts. This was cool as hell, and instilled in me, being a systems geek, a need to get a copy of Small Talk, or Squeak, the updated version of Small Talk, running on a machine. I need to investigate that.

3) A demo of Croquet, which is Alan's new product. This looks cool as hell. And it's funny that I see this now, as I'm in the middle of reading Neuromancer. I'm not sure what this could be used for though. Not that that's a bad thing. I'm a believer in the old ethos of "invent it, then figure out what to do with it." It's just not high on my priorities of download right now. Maybe once it's in beta stage.

A few days ago I was poking around some news sites, and came across the The Religious Movements Homepage @ The Univeristy of Virginia. I really need to play around with this more, but they list Discordianism, so they get props.

And speaking of religious links, I rediscovered The Gnosis Archive after the post around the Wandering Bishops, and what a fine archive it is.

OK, that's enough for tonight.

Posted by Matt at May 6, 2003 12:06 AM