Kanon Wakeshima has a cool cello and voice song, taken from the soundtrack of an anime, of course, but still, a pretty cool song: Kanon Wakeshima - Suna No Oshiro




Emilie Autumn
has some really nice instrumental songs, like the one I put here, and some nice voice songs. Unfortunately I don't like the instrumentation of the voice songs. I am still looking for a perfect crazy electric violin and voice song, but it may be that singing and playing the violin is impossible or at least too difficult. So here is Emilie Autumn - Manic Depression:

It appears that a British project, secretly conducted by the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, has produced a method of encapsulating hydrogen into microparticles of porous material. The result is something that acts like a liquid, burns like hydrogen and can be used inside normal cars without any engine modification. The price they propose is 1.5$ per gallon, which is 0.396$ per liter or 0.2915 euros. What is cool about it is that they don't need to extract any resource in order to produce this miracle fuel.

Could THIS be the end of oil? Frankly I am amazed that this news reached me and not the one about Stephen Bennington found dead in a ditch somewhere. I can only hope that the secrecy of the project paid off and that the guys at Cella Energy have really managed to find the solution while under the radar of Big Oil. Or maybe it is simply the time in which the dependency on oil has become a bigger threat to national security than the lack of funding coming from oil companies.

Link to the original news: Breakthrough promises $1.50 per galon synthetic gasoline with no carbon emissions

Update: I may have spoken too soon. A NewScientist article explains the process in a slightly different light. The beads do store hydrogen, but they must be heated in order to release that hydrogen, then the hydrogen would be used in fuel cells. That is at odds with the idea that you can use it as gasoline in a petrol tank car. Oh, well, I hope they get it right someday.

Another interesting List of Wikipedia is the list of religious texts. It's a medium sized list, although I suspect it is not nearly complete and that some of the works there are pretty big.

I am not much on religion, but I wonder what one would come to think of if presented with all the texts in the list, exposed to them without any cultural bias. Would some sort of distilation of the concept of religion emerge from it, or would everybody just choose a religion they feel more comfortable with? Or maybe they would write their own religious texts.

When I think about it, I can't help but compare it with the emergence of certain genres in fiction, like alien invasion sci-fi or comic book super heroes. First there are some original authors that come up with an idea. The idea is well liked, bought and distributed. It becomes well known so that other people start making work of their own that is inspired by that. It's almost organic, with reproduction, mutation, cross breeding and extinction. However, the integrity of religions is mostly enforced by communities of people that insist on changing nothing. They stop evolution, but also protect against extinction. Is stagnation the hallmark of religion or is it the stability that it provides in a world in continuous flux of change?

I will tell you this: I like evolution. And I mean it in the most general sense, not only the Darwinian one. I find it ironic that in my mind religion is the opposite of evolution. Or maybe that's a cultural bias. Hmm...

The Shigurui (Death Frenzy) manga is now complete. The beautifully terrible story of two exceptional samurai in a world of politics, betrayal and cultural conditioning, locked in absolute rivalry, has ended with the 84th chapter, Pure Crimson. There is an anime with the same subject, I've also seen it and it is really great, even if it stops dead after 11 episodes. I actually recommend to watch the anime and then continue with the chapters in the manga, in order to understand better the feeling of the story. It must be said that the translation from a book written by a war veteran to a graphic novel by a mangaka 58 years his young and then translated to TV anime has not lost, but gained insight and emotion.

One can read the entire manga at MangaFox.

I've never thought to check if there is such a list on the Internet, but apparently it is, as described in the xkcd comic. Good thing I at least read that! Wikipedia's List of common misconceptions is a very interesting read, many of the myths described there being reedited regularly through the media without them actually being true! So, get reading.

The fifth book in the Dexter Morgan series by Jeff Lindsay, Dexter is Delicious is slightly better written than the first four, but also less credible. The main character is torn between his Dark Passanger and the desire to love and protect his newly born child. He thus decides to "become human" in the worst possible moment. His brother Brian, who attempted to kill Dexter's adoption sister Deborah, also makes an appearance. The bad guys in the story are a cannibal ring and they are quite the gourmet, requiring Dexter as a main course.

The problem with this book, apart from the general Dexter Morgan hard to swallow leaps of faith, is that the Dark Passenger is pushed back, as Dexter gets in tough with his parental instincts. For me, at least, Dark-Dexter was the main character and the mischievous whispers of his inner demon were the delight of the series. If I would want to know people having kids and loving their pinkness I would read something else entirely.

I will continue to follow the series, but I can't help feeling a little dissappointed every time I read one of the books in the series. With such a wonderful subject, the possibilities are limitless and a great deal of potential wasted.

Pete Postlethwaite is dead. This has hit me hard and it is difficult to describe why. He has played in so many movies that I loved, but I also loved his acting and manner. Now, at only 64, he died peacefully after a lengthy illness. How can anyone die peacefully of cancer is beyond me. This disease is just ridiculous, somebody get rid of it already!

Anyway, Mr. Postlethwaite was a great actor and I will personally miss him.

I've remembered this song when reading a review of the third movie in the Lost Boys franchise and watching its trailer. Really, you should watch the first one. The others two are a probably a completely different thing. I haven't watched them, yet. The remade version of the song in the trailer immediately rekindled some of the feelings I had when watching as a kid the atmospheric original film; this is proof of its value, I believe. Also, many artists have covered the song in different and interesting ways, listed below.

I will not get into the whole "Poor Corey Haim" thing, I didn't really have much love for the guy, but in Lost Boys he was cool. Here is the song, with a fan made video:


Some nice covers from the tube:
by Ashford Twins
by Blutengel
by Nikki McKibbin
by Carfax Abbey
by Ventana

Enjoy.

I've just seen the last episode of the first season of Caprica, the series offshooting from Battlestar Galactica. There will be no second season, as the show has been cancelled. Why is that?

Let's start with something other than pure financial interests (oh, you TV network Guatrau!) and discuss the effort that was put in the series. You have a very successful and innovative series like Battlestar Galactica, creating an entire universe with its technology and religions and cultures, and then you go further and create a new series that actually reproduces the lives of people on those worlds. You get cultural criminal organisations, religious fanatics, technologists, robots, AI, virtual worlds, space travel, fashion, music, everything! This is the hardest part of any story: the setup. So you get the setup done and then you... stop writing the story because of low viewer turnout? Are you stupid?! Just tell it in a way that will please your stupid audience and also continue the effort, or can't your little brain get around that?

Then it is about the actor effort. God(s), I hated Clarice Willow and you know why? Because Polly Walker did a great job playing that character, down to the microexpressions and little scheming eye movements. Eric Stoltz, Esai Morales, even the teenagers and kids played well, creating really complex likeable or hateable characters. The creator, Ronald D. Moore, which I totally hate for ruining the end seasons of Battlestar Galactica, also did his best and I can see that it is a great show. And you are going to piss on that? The success of any project lies in the motivation to do it. All these people were motivated and you, money grabbing assholes, pissed in their faces. Shame doesn't begin to cover it. I don't want to shame you, I want you to die a horrible death, you soulless vampires!

And then there is the audience, your precious little numbers. Do you guys know why your network is called SyFy for? I will tell you, so you can say "oh!" with your carefully arranged heads; I guess this is coming as a surprise: it comes from the old name of SciFi, which in turn comes from science fiction. Now you fuckers get what your audience is? Or did you rename the channel only because you have no idea what it was about anyway? Kudos for HBO for raising the standards cause you are just letting them drop in the gutter.

So, in conclusion: Fuck you, SyFy Channel and all your executives, and as you are doing everything possible to stiffle creativity, I wish you a very creative and painful death!

It is time for another exhaustive list of TV series I have been watching. Some are great, some are horrible, but the moral of the story is I just can't stop :) Here it goes:

• Caprica - A spin-off from Battlestar Galactica, it showed a lot of promise, tackling the culture of the twelve colonies, issues like emergent AI and virtual life. However, it did not appeal to the public so it was cancelled. I am yet to see the last episodes from the series, but I expect the quality of the show to have plummeted long before the official news of the cancellation. When a network exec puts limits like "get me audience or die" people just lose interest in doing something and it quickly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
• Doctor Who - one wacky adventure after another, I still watch this British series. What it lacks in budget it compensates with weird plot lines and original writing. Quite refreshing.
• Eureka - a silly sci-fi comedy, I would have expected it to die after a few seasons. Alas, people like easy, silly, pointless shows and only resent the ones that makes them think. Season 4 is expected to resume in July 2011.
• House MD - I am kind of stuck watching this less and less medical series, because my wife likes it. I am bored by the plot, characters and almost everything in it except the occasional interesting medical fact. I hear season 8 might be the last.
• Criminal Minds - some episodes are pretty stupid, others are brilliant. The exposure of the minds of serial killers through behavioural analysis is a great subject. Alas, they put too much focus on the procedure and too little on the actual principles behind the work of the FBI unit. Don't fret, though, a spin-off with Forest Whitaker as the lead of another crime fighting group. Unfortunately, the joint episode from Criminal Minds that shouls have presented the new characters was weak and the new team pathetic.
• Southpark - this animation comedy series has its bad moments, but usually it is exceptionally funny and making fun of recent events.
• Dexter - the show keeps holding strong, even if they kind of drifted from the perfect quality of the first seasons. I hear season 6 might be last, even if the fourth book in the Dexter series, Dexter is Delicious, is now available. Lucky for the TV series, they only got inspiration from the books which were not of such good quality as the show.
• Big Love - interesting story about a mormon family trying to maintain their plurimarital beliefs in the face of adversity from goverment and other mormons alike. The 5th season is to start soon, but it is also the last. It kind of went bad from the third one, anyway.
• Fringe - I am yet to watch the episodes from season 3. It is a pretty dumb show, so people like it. I am waiting for a period in which I have nothing to do in order to watch it.
• True Blood - I like True Blood! It's not the vampires, but the feel of the backwater town that is plagued by all kinds of supernatural creatures. I think the show did great, but lately it kind of stuttered. Season 4 is to start somewhere in June
• Californication - luckily, father Christmas brought us two preair episodes from season 4 which should have started next year. I still like the show, but it is a far cry from the greatness of the first season, during which I wanted to make a son and name him David Duchovny.
• Breaking Bad - is it good anymore? The show started great and I did watch it religiously, but it does seem to get less and less interesting. It's a crystal meth male version of Weeds.
• Secret Diary of a Call Girl - Billie Piper could not have been more perfect for this series. She was delicious from the first time I saw her in that silly video clip of hers. The show was sexy, interesting, and will continue with a fourth season, which is said to be last. Why, God, why?!
• Entourage - this series is another television gem. It features the Hollywood adventures of a talented actor and his close childhood friends. The show managed to maintain a consistent positive feel for five or six seasons, which made it both great and original in this world of TV drama. The last seasons, though, went for a dark weird vibe and the eigth season will be both short and the last. A feature film is in the works, maybe, but it doesn't matter, since the original feel is pretty much destroyed.
• Stargate Universe - Yeah, finally a Stargate show that takes itself seriously! Or so I thought. When the audience didn't like the dark and gritty atmosphere, the black wind of show cancellation made everybody not give a damn. The result is a half baked show, troubled by financing and screenwriting issues. Poor Robert Carlyle did a marvelous job, but a single good Scottish actor can't save a show from its evil masters. The second season of Stargate Universe will also be the last.
• Torchwood - A Doctor Who spin-off, it took a big break after an attempted publicity stunt. Season 4 is to start next year. Fun series, but when you take Doctor Who, you Americanize it and then you make it even sillier, you are bound to miss somewhere.
• The Sarah Jane Adventures - another Doctor Who spin-off, directed almost exclusively towards young kids. Of course, I watch it and enjoy it very much.
• V - the original miniseries was not great, but that is no reason to make a stupid show like this. It is about aliens invading Earth via subterfuge and manipulation and the human resistance. It quickly turned into a involuntary parody of World War II movies with dumb Germans and smart Allies.
• Men Of A Certain Age - suprisingly good and serious, it is about three middle aged guys and childhood friends living their lives. It is funny, but deep, with characters that feel real and jokes that really make you think and smile. Way to go, Ray Romano! Season 2 just started.
• Weeds - the show just ended its sisth season. The seventh should be its last. Not even the babeliciousness of Mary-Louise Parker could save the last season, which was boring and kind of pointless. Started so well, though.
• The Good Wife - it is a lawyer show, mostly directed towards women, but I like it. Characters are complex enough, the law cases feel real and the plot is interesting.
• The Walking Dead - woohoo! Zombie series! Also made after comic books, so they can't fail too much. I like it, but since it focuses on the personal drama of the survivors and not the survival itself, and since the zombies are slow and ridiculous... meh! :)
• Shattered - Canadian show starring Callum Keith Rennie, which you may know from Battlestar Galactica, it is about a cop with split personality disorder. Not very realistic, with a 70's feel to it, even if it is supposed to take place in the present, but I watch it nonetheless. I wonder if there will be a second season to it.
• Haven - supposedly based on a Stephen King short story, it is basically a mashup between Fringe and Twin Peaks. It's worse than both, but it is easy to watch when you shut your brain down.
• Rubicon - The wife watches this, I can't. It is like somebody accidentally dropped a bit of Lost in Nikita, but also removed the hot chicks.
• Royal Pains - an easy medical slightly-comedy show. Started funny, now it's just boring. I will tell you when it's over.
• Identity - British police drama that had some potential. The Brits cancelled it after it's first season, but the ABC network is said to want to make their own series.
• Lost Girl - Canadian show again, this time a sort of supernatural thing with a hot bisexual chick that is also a succubus as the lead. Buffy like, nothing serious, but at least it's sexy.
• Nikita - Nikita is now an American-Asian, still bad-ass and with Michael wrapped around her little finger. Pointless show, really.
• No Ordinary Family - a family of super heroes! What could be cooler? I stopped watching it after the pilot episode.
• Better with You - my attempt to watch something really easy with the girls, a show with background laughter and stuff, it's about three couples of different ages and their developped manierisms. Instead of actually analysing the causes and finding solutions, though, they just focus on the inevitability that all comedy American couples look and sound the same in their age group. Yuck!
• Pioneer One - this is a show that is created by an independent studio (read: two guys in a garrage), freely distributed via Bittorrent (legally) and financed through donations. For 20000$ an episode, it is pretty cool. I donated some money since I really want this to work. Don't expect a master-piece, but I personally enjoy it and await the release of the third episode.

Phew, that's about all. But there are also the shows that I intend to watch! :) Here is the list:

• Terra Nova - a show that is supposed to start in the fall of 2011. The synposis sounds kind of ridiculous, but hey, it's sci-fi!
• Tilda - an HBO comedy about two blogger women journalists: Diane Keaton and Ellen Page. Both are annoying, but good actresses, and HBO does good shows. Let's see how it goes.
• Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior - I mentioned this show as the spin-off from Criminal Minds. I don't hold high hopes for it, though, based on the episode that presented the new team.
• A Game of Thrones - I've read the books and they were great! I predict the show will be epic, since the books themselves were detailed, complex, with great story and a bit of fantasy as well. I can't wait for the show to start.
• Falling Skies - aliens are attacking, again. I wonder if they started this show to finally bury V, which sucks. However, how much better can another show be when the plot is that an advanced technological race comes to Earth to occupy it. I mean, this dump?!

Ok, now it's over... or should I mention the anime series I am watching as well... how about the web series? Hmm... :)

There are visionaries today that are capable of describing the future, as they see it. If it is close to the actual future, they get to be called futurologists. Of course, one will jump up and say that futurology has a definition and it is an art or a science that has nothing to do with vision, but I say that this is exactly what it is: guesswork. Guessing can be facilitated, however, by studying trends, staying current with new technology and thinking ahead on the needs that people have and will have in the future.

So how come no one is really good at it? How come people said in the past that by now we would get to Mars and have free energy and the likes? The reason is simple: because we can, but we won't! Just like people walking on the street and witnessing a robbery or a beating just stay and watch, but don't act, we are a world of diffuse responsibility. Nobody is responsible, everybody is to blame. But it's not true. I am responsibile, and you are; we make the future, we are the people, we are the ones that DO anything and everything.

So what is the error of futurology: they assume we would do what we can, when in truth we only do what we care. My New Year's resolution is to care, see where it takes me.

I've just finished watching episode two from the first season of Pioneer One, a sci-fi show made by amateurs, financed by donations and freely downloadable via Bittorrent. That is just fabulous! An episode is done with 20000$ and they need about 40000$ more to finish the last two episodes of the series.

I thought of this kind of system myself a year or so ago as I was observing that almost all movies and shows I watch are made by Americans, through gigantic media outlets that are only interested in profits and cancel any good show on the basis of money alone. I was wondering: where are the people that would be to TV what bloggers are to printed press? Of course, writing an article in a free public place like Blogger is a lot simpler than making a movie, but the idea is there. Mangakus do it all the time, in the US the comic book is back, why not TV shows?

The series is really good for the money that went into it. Except for some clueless actors that play very small parts, the people involved act decently and the atmosphere of the show is powerful and enticing. The dialogue is also strangely good, as I am used to clichees being sprouted in scenes of a certain type and when that doesn't happen, I have an eery feeling of unreality!

Pioneer One is not the only show like this. There is a network, called Vodo, with the motto: We love free! that helps distribute a lot of these Creative Commons licenced films and shows. I really want this to work. This gets the money from people interested to watch and gives it to the creators, rather than some vampire distribution network.

On that note, I would like to also talk about another TV show that is about to appear, called S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Yes, indeed, it is a TV series inspired by the game with the same name, which in turn was inspired by Roadside Picnic, by the Strugatsky brothers. The show is made by the Ukranian company that made the game and you can follow the progress of the series by going to its official site. The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. show would not be freely released, but at least it is not part of the official channels for TV distribution. The story itself sounds cool and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe counts about 40 books already (in Russian, unfortunately, but give it time).

It moves slowly, but surely. I am convinced that in a few years people will make and distribute work via the Internet, directly sponsored by the people interested in their creation. All the salesmen in the middle will just be bypassed and creators will be controlling the cultural market rather than distributors. It only feels natural: if you distribute something under a Creative Commons licence, there can be no piracy :) So there, what I've always said comes true: the death of piracy is synonimous with the death of mammoth distribution companies and all their bullshit.

Here is the link for the article, written by Brian Hayes, who argues that programmers should rather communicate peacefully, rather than fight each other over the language they are using. In the end it didn't really reveal anything grandieuse, but his post was detailed and funny and nice to read.

Update: I've thought about the article and I feel I have to add to this post.

First of all, I have to admit, as the author of the initial article admited that he is a Lisp fan, that I like the C-like structure of programs (minus the pointers :D). Actually, I would go so far as to occasionally dream of building an application which would convert Python and F# and Lisp and all those wacky languages into a semicolon/curly bracket version that I could use, then convert it back to their normal format before compilation or use. I agree with the author that the syntax itself is not very relevant to the language, but it is relevant to the users. I can "read" C#-like code much easier because by now I am fluent in C#. I believe that a nice option is to have the kind of functionality I am describing: something that would not change the language, but would slightly change the syntax so that someone can read it more easily.

Second of all, I am amazed that something that started as a nice introduction to an idea would continue with an admission (of guilt >:) ) that the author likes Lisp and then abruptly end. He didn't mention anything about the .Net idea which tries to unify a lot of programmaing languages under an intermediate compiler language. This brings the great opportunity to use a library written in a language with an application written in another. If that is not a good idea, I don't know what is!

Programming Collective Intelligence is easy to read, small but concise, and its only major flaw is the title; and that is because it is misleading. The book touches quite heavily on using collective information and social site APIs, but what it is really about is data mining. It may not be a flaw with the majority of readers, but personally I wouldn't care about the collective, the Facebook API or anything like that, but I was really interested in the different ways to analyse data. In that sense, this book can be taken as a reference guide on data mining.

Each algorithm and idea is accompanied by Python sources. I personally dislike Python as a language, but the author afirms he chose it intentionally because the algorithms look clear and the source is small, with its purpose unhindred by many language artefacts. The book was so interesting, though, that I plan (if I ever find the time :( ) to take all the examples and do them in C#, then place them on Github.

The book covers classification and feature extraction, supervised and unsupervised algorithms, filtering and discovery and it also has exercises at the end of each chapter. Here is a short list:

• Making Recommendations - about the way one can use data from user preferences in order to create recommendations. Distance metrics and finding similar items to the ones we like or people with similar tastes.
• Discovering Groups - about classifying data into different groups. Supervised and unsupervised methods are described, hierarchical clustering, dendograms, column clustering, K-Means clustering and diferent methods of visualisation.
• Searching and Ranking - it basically explains step by step how to make a search engine. Word frequency, word distance, location of a document, counting methods, artifical neural networks, the Google PageRank algorithm, extraction of information from link text, and learning from user clicks can be found in this chapter.
• Optimization - simulated annealing, hill climbing, genetic algorithms are described and exampled here. The chapter talks about optimizing problems like travel schedules and the example uses data from Kayak.
• Document Filtering - a chapter about filtering documents based on preferences or getting rid of spam. You can find here Bayesian filtering and the Fisher method.
• Decision Trees - a very interesting method of splitting information items into groups that have a hierarchical connection between them. The examples use the Zillow API
• Bulding Price Models - k-Nearest neighbours, weighted neighbours, scaling.
• Advanced Classification - Kernel Methods and Support Vector Machines. This is a great chapter and it show some pretty cool uses of data mining using the Facebook API
• Finding Independent Features - reviews Bayesian classification and clustering, then proposes Non-Negative Matrix Factorisation, a method invented circa the late 90s, a powerful algorithm which uses matrix algebra to find features in a data set
• Evolving Intelligence - bingo! Genetic Programming made easy. Really cool.
• Algorithm Summary, Third Party Libraries and Mathematical Formulas - if you had any doubts you can use this book as a data mining reference book, the last three chapters eliminate them. An even more concise summary of the methods explained in the book, listing every math formula and obscure library used in the book

Conclusion: I really loved the book and I can hardly wait to take it apart with a computer in hand.

It's been a while since I've last posted some music. This is not the kind of music I would listen to, mostly, but it is all Japanese music, 5 seconds of each band, a lot of bands. I thought it was a nice overview of a type of music I know almost nothing about. Enjoy!