This account of an Australian-led team's 1830 meter descent into a cave in Georgia is amazing. Check out this map.
I've always had great fun climbing around through dark passages, either natural or man-made. I wonder if there are any big, amateur-explorable caves in the Boston area.... In the meantime, I might give this fantasy version a try.
UPDATE: Here's where the MIT-based Boston Grotto Club goes...
9.28.2004
9.27.2004
These aren't the droids you're looking for...
Got the new Star Wars DVD set from Amazon the other day. The transfer is magnificent, though the high-contrast colors that characterize many of Lucas's cooler sets and costumes result in some noticeable artifacting.
The movies are facing some tough competition for screen time, though, from Knights of the Old Republic. The role playing game from Bioware is the most fun I've had with my XBox since I finished Deus Ex: Invisible War, and the best Star Wars game I've played since Tie Fighter.
The mechanics are terrific, with every design decision seemingly made to prevent frustration (characters don't die from combat, just knocked unconscious until its conclusion; there are no inventory constraints; saves can be made anywhere, even in combat). There's no question that they got the Star Wars "feel" right. Even the voice acting isn't that bad. And nothing beats crafting your own lightsaber.
The movies are facing some tough competition for screen time, though, from Knights of the Old Republic. The role playing game from Bioware is the most fun I've had with my XBox since I finished Deus Ex: Invisible War, and the best Star Wars game I've played since Tie Fighter.
The mechanics are terrific, with every design decision seemingly made to prevent frustration (characters don't die from combat, just knocked unconscious until its conclusion; there are no inventory constraints; saves can be made anywhere, even in combat). There's no question that they got the Star Wars "feel" right. Even the voice acting isn't that bad. And nothing beats crafting your own lightsaber.
The Semantic Web
Good overview article in Tech Review on Tim Berners-Lee's quest to create the "Semantic Web": an interconnected maze of meaningful data that can be mined by software applications much easier than the eyeball-focused WWW.
While it would be great if it worked, fundamental obstacles remain. When asked for an example of a working "phase 2" application of the Semantic Web, Berners-Lee points to the Friend of a Friend (FOAF) RDF format. But follow the link to the form-based FOAF creator and this quote stands out:
In fairness, this isn't just a limitation of the Semantic Web. Much bally-hooed "Web Services" remain just the latest incarnation of RPC (this time over HTTP) until the discovery problem is solved.
In lieu of a real discovery scheme, the FOAF page has several recommendations to ensure your RDF file is properly indexed by Google. Google, arguably the most successful application on the web, doesn't understand a lick of semantics, but does a great job of information discovery purely through statistical analysis of link patterns.
I think the applications that will provide us with the most benefits will be those that, like Google, operate by throwing lots of data at simple algorithms, rather than relying on the holy grail of a scalable, semantically-aware discovery protocol.
I have some thoughts on what one of those applications might look like... stay tuned.
While it would be great if it worked, fundamental obstacles remain. When asked for an example of a working "phase 2" application of the Semantic Web, Berners-Lee points to the Friend of a Friend (FOAF) RDF format. But follow the link to the form-based FOAF creator and this quote stands out:
The 'discovery' aspect of FOAF (i.e. how FOAF compliant applications find your description) is still an area under discussion.Isn't discovery the problem the Semantic Web is designed to address? Common, machine-parsible data formats are a solved problem (see XML, or RDF for that matter). No one, however, has yet produced a real-world method for multiple client applications to discover and aggregate multiple data sources without the kind of human-arranged connections that don't scale with either the number of sources or the number of data formats.
In fairness, this isn't just a limitation of the Semantic Web. Much bally-hooed "Web Services" remain just the latest incarnation of RPC (this time over HTTP) until the discovery problem is solved.
In lieu of a real discovery scheme, the FOAF page has several recommendations to ensure your RDF file is properly indexed by Google. Google, arguably the most successful application on the web, doesn't understand a lick of semantics, but does a great job of information discovery purely through statistical analysis of link patterns.
I think the applications that will provide us with the most benefits will be those that, like Google, operate by throwing lots of data at simple algorithms, rather than relying on the holy grail of a scalable, semantically-aware discovery protocol.
I have some thoughts on what one of those applications might look like... stay tuned.
9.07.2004
9.03.2004
Kerry is a phony
Put aside plans, rhetoric, and what he did or didn't do (or did and didn't do!) over the last 35 years, it's still blindingly obvious that Kerry is a phony in the Holden Caulfield sense. Nothing makes that more clear than his transparently pandering claims to be a Boston Red Sox fan. Last night, during his midnight rally "wake-up call", he warmed up the crowd by telling them how great it was that the Sox were 2 1/2 games behind the Yankees. If the junior senator from Massachusetts had actually glanced at the box scores, he'd have seen that the Yankees (damn them) had soundly beaten the Indians 9-1, leaving the Red Sox still 3 1/2 games back, despite their sweep of the Wild Card competition Angels.
If this were the only instance, it would not bother me. Politicians like to talk up the home town team. But this is the same John Kerry whose favorite player on the current Red Sox squad is Manny Ortez... or is it David Ortez? The same John Kerry who couldn't take a position on what cap Roger Clemens should wear into the Hall of Fame or getting rid of the designated hitter rule when he was interviewed during a Sox game during the DNC. Real Red Sox fans are nothing if not opinionated. I don't care what you think, but ye gods man, come down for something.
I won't talk too much about how he throws a baseball. If this election were decided on pitching, it wouldn't be a contest.
After watching last night's moving, visionary speech by President Bush, and Kerry's petty response, I'm not sure it'll be a contest for much longer, anyways.
If this were the only instance, it would not bother me. Politicians like to talk up the home town team. But this is the same John Kerry whose favorite player on the current Red Sox squad is Manny Ortez... or is it David Ortez? The same John Kerry who couldn't take a position on what cap Roger Clemens should wear into the Hall of Fame or getting rid of the designated hitter rule when he was interviewed during a Sox game during the DNC. Real Red Sox fans are nothing if not opinionated. I don't care what you think, but ye gods man, come down for something.
I won't talk too much about how he throws a baseball. If this election were decided on pitching, it wouldn't be a contest.
After watching last night's moving, visionary speech by President Bush, and Kerry's petty response, I'm not sure it'll be a contest for much longer, anyways.
9.02.2004
Vodka
Ever since I heard of them, I've thought it would be fun to stay in one of those "ice hotels" ... it's one of those things that probably sounds more fun than it is, and what I really find appealing is the idea of drinking vodka out of a glass made of ice.
Thankfully, Hallsey gave me some Ice Shots for making your own frozen shot glasses. Now that Slate has done some vodka taste-testing, I have to finally give it a try. They rank what's been my recent favorite, Belvedere, pretty low, so maybe I don't know what I'm missing.
On a related note, VodkaPundit has some great RNC coverage.
Thankfully, Hallsey gave me some Ice Shots for making your own frozen shot glasses. Now that Slate has done some vodka taste-testing, I have to finally give it a try. They rank what's been my recent favorite, Belvedere, pretty low, so maybe I don't know what I'm missing.
On a related note, VodkaPundit has some great RNC coverage.
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