Archive for August, 2007
August 24, 2007 at 12:46 pm · Filed under Design & Web Geekery + Blogging about blogging
SFSlim has been sending tweets (aka twitter posts) from Black Rock City. Proving that the playa isn’t as remote as it once was. As more people and their wifi devices start arriving, there will probably be more tweets coming from the people’s dusty tents.
As Laughing Squid recently reported, there is now a Twitter Burner group. In order to post to the group you need to first follow the group and then just write a tweet like normal but add BURN to the start of your tweet. It will then automatically be added as a Burner Twitter (be patient it might take a couple minutes to appear).
Now what makes this kinda cool is that Twitter doesn’t have group functionality. This is all done with php/sql wizardry thanks to Kosso and Raines. Kosso worked out this TwitterGroups hack for Gnomedex and wrote up how he did it in a post on his blog: How I created a TwitterGroup for Gnomedex.
The only flaw I see in this technique is the potential for a massive flood of Burner tweets completely drowning my friend’s tweets. It would be better if Twitter had built in group functionality that you could keep separate from your friend’s posts. However, this hack works and is pretty cool. My thanks and geek respect go out to Kosso and Raines for whipping this up.
On Edit: I’m less liking the twitter group in practice. Whenever your friends post to it you see their post twice (once normal and once reposted to Burner twitter). It just adds clutter and kinda ruins the simplicity that makes twitter great. Real Twitter groups would be great but this hack is not it.
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August 23, 2007 at 6:20 pm · Filed under Design & Web Geekery + Minds, Brains, & inbetween + Art Freak Culture + Life, Meaning, & Selfhood
- dead simple and so easy you’ll barely know you’re using it (which is what really makes it work)
- a constant stream of banal life snippets of the world in 140 characters or less
- shouting out to no one and everyone with little expectation that anyone will read it or care
- a digital location-less replacement for the the social awareness of the village*
* In the village, you always knew
…that Agnes always went to the grocery store at noon on Sunday, and Old Fred’s hanging out at the tavern later than usual lately. In our messy chaos of busy urban life, we only run into most of our friends every week or so. We try to catch up but usually we only remember to mention the big things — not the little banal things which also make us who we are. As result, there’s something missing in our interactions, and we end up lacking that ambient social awareness that helps bring people together.
Not everyone “Get’s it”
While not perfect, Twitter somehow fills this gap in social awareness. You don’t feel it right away, which is why some people try it out for a week or so and then stop saying “I don’t get it!?!” However after a couple weeks of gleaning the stream of your friend’s twitters, you start to feel it. There it is out of the corner of you vision — you somehow feel closer to those people even though it’s hard to put your finger on why. And the next time you see them, the tension of “catching up” is softened.
What about LiveJournal?
For some LiveJournal works in this manner, but LJ is also as the name implies a journal, and it too often becomes a forum for melancholy narcissistic griping and the ubiquitous replies of *hugs* and commiseration. Not to mention, the flood of inane LJ memes (what CareBear are you?) which are a poor substitute for social bonding. It’s hard to really pour your heart out in 140 characters or less, and this limitation grants Twitter to fill a different role.
Floating In My Twitter Stream
I have to say that Twitter is more relevant when mobile (via sms or mobile browser; my iPhone is great for it), but it still fills it’s purpose on normal computer. I check my twitter stream every now and then and see my friends and my family (yes my parents have jumped on twitter and it’s fabulous). I also follow a couple other bloggers and people I find interesting or funny like Othar who writes what can only be described as Twitter fantasy fiction. With only the simplest perusing, I have a slightly stronger connection with all of their lives.
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August 21, 2007 at 6:27 pm · Filed under Design & Web Geekery
I’ve recently revised my Gmail, IMAP, and iPhones Tutorial. It was brought to my attention that there was an issue with MS Exchange which made emails sent using my set up read as if they were from: “Colin [my gmail addy]; on behalf of; Colin [my catcubed addy]”. So after screaming how much I hated Exchange, I figured out another solution (which is basically a slight revision of my first setup).
Change to outgoing server setup
Now instead of using gmail as the outgoing SMTP server, I am using my public facing email address SMTP server for outgoing. Also I have “Always BCC Myself” turned on so that sent email appears in gmail (mail sent back this way appears just like normal sent mail in gmail and is connected to conversation threads like normal — gmail’s magic that way). I also added a brief benefits section, added notes on optional configurations, and cleaned the tutorial up a little to make it easier to follow.
All these changes were made on the main Gmail, IMAP, and iPhones Tutorial post. As this is the main page being linked to and commented on by everyone, any future revisions will continue to be made on that page.
Tip Jar
If you are one of the wonderful people who added to the tip jar (located over in the right sidebar under my photo), I will email you noting this fix and will also notify of any future revisions to the tutorial page — think of it like getting free upgrades.
.Mac Issues
It should be noted that the .Mac issue has still not been resolved, and I haven’t had time to look into it, so it is not recommended to use .Mac for your IMAP at this time.
Stage Left…
OK that’s it for me! I’m signing out for a couple weeks for the big dumb dusty blinky campout!
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August 21, 2007 at 12:32 pm · Filed under Art Freak Culture + Life, Meaning, & Selfhood
Burning Man preparation has begun to take over my life. As I mentioned in my last post, it’s looking to be a dusty year. Hopefully we won’t see a return of the the 3 day long condition alpha storm of 2002. In any case, I’m bringing my respirator and my patience.
I leave on Monday, and I won’t have much time for CatCubed, nor will I have much time to respond to questions concerning my Gmail, IMAP, iPhone setup. If your question is easy, I’ll shoot you a response; however if it takes more time, it will have to wait till I return.
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August 19, 2007 at 11:19 pm · Filed under Art Freak Culture
Just got word via email from Nifer & Slim who are already on the playa.
Remember all the predictions about it being a dusty year? Well da playa is living up the hype.
They’ve been up there since Sat and there have been major whiteouts both days. Good goggles without vents are obviously a must — their suggested getting ski or motorcross goggles rather than cheap-ass raver goggles.
Also if this keeps up, you’ll need something to stop your lungs from filling up completely with playa. If you have respirator masks bring them — in the very very least a bandana. Otherwise your lungs will be screaming “Do Not Want!”
YOU HAVE BEEN SUFFICIENTLY WARNED
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August 17, 2007 at 1:03 pm · Filed under Minds, Brains, & inbetween + Life, Meaning, & Selfhood
The Washington Post recently had an interesting article entitled, His Heart Whirs Anew, about a Peter Houghton, the first lifetime recipient of a Jarvik 2000 ventricular assist device (ie an artificial heart).
After being placed on the device, Peter Houghton has struggled with a deadening of his emotions. After reading this, my first reaction was: of course, now that his heart is just a whirring machine he no longer gets the quickening of the pulse of emotional arousal; thus, the sensory feedback is missing and he interprets this as a deadening of his emotions.
Strangely, the article never mentioned this rather obvious probable cause. Peter Houghton is a psychologist himself, so you’d think he’d be familiar with the James-Lange theory, which says that we experience physical arousal, and interpret this arousal as emotion. Alas, he’s a Jungian psychologist and a devout Catholic, which is potentially distorting his view of things.
Why blame the cart, when the horse has been replaced with a horse-droid?
As a Jungian psychologist and devout catholic, Houghton seems to view his artificial heart as symbolic entity effecting his soul rather than a physical one effecting is limbic system. In his search for a cause, he rambles on about becoming an “invented person trying to cope with it, trying to deal with the emotional context of it.” He also says that he now feels a certain emotional distance from those close to him and says he’s more cautious about his own emotions and tries not to invoke them.
Granted, this all could be simple post-operative depression and his obtuse search for meaning might actually further drive him into depression. He did go though a period of clinical depression with some suicidal thoughts. However, it’s also likely that this depression was precipitated by the mechanically steady heart shutting down of the sensory feedback so important to emotions.
Much like Capgras Delusion, where people are seen as impostors due to the lack of emotional recognition, his feelings of emotional distance are probably caused by a loss in empathy. While a smile from his grandchild may trigger his mirror neurons to create a shared emotional state, his heart remains steady as ever putting a halt on the emotional arousal. Thus, he rationalizes that his grandchildren should make him happy, but it’s not so he rationalizes that those close to him “can do without you.”
True it’s hard to tease this symptoms apart from general depression. Also this hypothesis is slightly weakened, as Johan Carlin points out by the fact that changes in pulse rate are more strongly effected by fear than happiness. The WP article does not discuss any other symptoms, so we really don’t know if he’s experienced this reduction in the sense of fear. It would be interesting to test his fear arousal state — but potentially useless without having test results from before the surgery.
Still I believe that his mechanical heart had some physical effect which flattened his emotional state. If we were all coldblooded and callous, we could of course test this by implanting some people with a mechanical heart and have a control group implanted a fake mechanical heart. However I somehow doubt that experiment would get past the IRB.
After writing this, I discovered that The Pineas Gage Fan Club wrote an excellent post discussing Houghton’s artificial heart and the James-Lange theory, entitled “Feel the heat… skips a beat” or the other way around? It’s a good writeup — better in some ways than mine — and I highly encourage that you read it.
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