9 Feb 2006: Kicking Ass and Taking Notes
Earlier today Graham attended the GVU Brownbag welcoming the newly minted, formerly GSU – Gatech BrainLab. They work with developing invasive and noninvasive brain interfaces for control of typing, surfing the web, etc.
Joel came! He quit his job touching up photos and maps.
He has 2 big projects and one small one.
1. Narration of an epic story through illustration.
2. Digital audio instrument: keyboard + trackpad with deformable grid
that allows you to navigate through harmony and scale space.
e. Tattoo artistry for his friends.
3. Children’s book as studies for number 1.
Graham and Joel went to dorkbot-atl to see Kevin and Steve talk.
The presentations were on video sculpture and gamelan-western hybrid music.
Vinny and Grant discussed Web 2.0 business models.
References: Gallery Nucleus, Kaneda, Video.Google, Homestar Runner, Achewood.
Zero cost distribution for creative works (other than the work creating them).
Grant wants to develop more of his creative side-projects.
Luke got published on Digg and Engadget. He hacked his phone to run Linux + apps.
This week he is learning a little about eclipse, eclipse plugins, rhino, and the linux usbnet module.
Currently in Baton Rouge on assignment.
Luke and I will be having a crawdad boil in the future. You will be invited.
Ben has started work for Bill. He’s working on a secret feature for Messenger.
"The weather is lovely because the jet stream just shifted
But it will be gone in a week and then back to the doldrums."
Music: an eclectic mix of alt-country, including Bright Eyes, courtesy of Octane.
I did not record audio this hackfest. Unfortunately, we did not get a table, so the distance between people would make for a very noisy signal. Octane is getting very busy, we may need to find a new venue soon. The "podcast" is now available at http://atlhack.org/podcasts/feed.rss, and has been added to the iTunes podcast directory. Regardless of the podcasts available for direct download, I’m going to add one per week to the feed.
Graham let us in on an unfortunate-if-true psuedo-rumor (since I was unable to confirm it): developers at Microsoft are no longer allowed to work on Open Source Projects. I think this is the biggest mistake they could make, as most great programmers tend to dabble in open source.
Rumor has it that it’s GNU stuff. They don’t want GNU code infecting their source.
Ah, ok. The GPL seems to have more idealism than practicality, so its to be expected that companies (especially *that* company) would be wary of people working with it. I think that the GPL is as close to legalized communism as possible.