What's This Documentation?

I went out for a Dennys' meal with John Draper on Sunday. We talked about a number of topics. I explained how Carbon worked with Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X for possibly the fifth time in the past five years and revisited what Noble Ape was for possibly the third or forth time in a similar time frame. I recommended John check out the On Apple document;

http://www.nobleape.com/docs/on_apple.html

Having recommended the document, I went back through it for myself. I found it really difficult to read. With the eyes of someone coming to it new, I thought to myself, how can I make this document better. What would make this document easier to read? Two ideas struck me. Either the document needs to be rewritten completely or a site wide glossary needs to be established.

People Are The Glossary Of the Log

I've wanted to do a glossary for both Noble Ape and Barbalet's Log for quite some time. The Regulars are the closest thing to a glossary for Barbalet's Log. It works on the joining people discussed in the Log, generally. Some of the folks in the Regulars section have dropped off the radar.

One of these people is Malek. I got a brief email from him a couple of days. Enough for a six week update. I do miss Malek's emails. They were always thought provoking and occasionally quite humourous.

Another missed regular is Butta Beats. I have been following his work with Nomadic Massive. Their site has recently been upgraded and there is a great video online featuring Butta and DJ Static.

http://www.nomadicmassive.ca/video.html

On the WeFunk tip, Nick (aka Professor Groove) contacted me about reviewing the new WeFunk site. Of course that was the least of my feedback. From following demographics, listener mailing lists, WeFunk tshirts and the all important work out the ballpark from ShoutCast numbers to average number of stream listeners. In short, a tech freestyle session on WeFunk.

Full Circle

I have written in the past about getting John Draper's take on the history of technology. The more I talk with John, the more aspects John brings to the discussion on the history of technology. I've stupidly purchased a digital recorder without MP3/USB connection. So it is purely a digital recorder. This has some benefits as it allows me to convert the audio to text. A far greater commodity in the world of plagiarism. But I wonder where the text should go and how the documentation should be put together.

Good night.

That Extra Yard...

On Wednesday, Michele and I discovered there was no milk in the house and as it was around the breakfast hour we decided to go to our local bagel store. It must have been around 7.30am. When I came out of the bagel store Michele was listening to Mark and Mercedes. They were talking about people with accents singing and your ability either to hear the accent or not hear the accent (or so I learned after the story was retold to me). Within - what appeared like seconds - I was waiting on hold listening to Americans call in an pretend to do accents or talk about how they pretended to do accents.

With many thanks to Mark and Mercedes' producer, JC, here's what happened next;

http://www.barbalet.net/log/06/accent.mp3

It's funny because at that time in the morning and with the wait I began to realise that I would be on Las Vegas radio just before they came to me. I was actually extremely nervous and this came through in my voice. I missed the 'and' between British and Australian to refer to the people in Vegas. But in general, I thought it was a reasonable morning breakfast call in.

In stark contrast to the BBC radio piece;

http://www.nobleape.com/int/na_bbc4.mp3

Where I spent a good quantity of time visualising the situation and working on my voice control. Oh well. Now it's logged.

Good afternoon.

Wheels in Re-Invention...

Developing open source projects, the question always come back - what about proprietary software? Developing Alife open source, the proprietary software, particularly the proprietary hobbyist software is always a harsh comparison.

http://www.gamingsteve.com/archives/2006/03/spore_gameplay_1.php

Most Alife developers - most open source Alife developers - talk about Will Wright's work with a great deal of reflective interest. ''I wanted to do this differently than SimEarth'' ''I wanted to use this feature from the Sims.'' This has been captured in a recent interview I did with the ALES team;

http://www.biota.org/people/alesteam/

The purpose of the interview was to capture the start of an Alife project. The initial idealism and documentation components and beginning to realise the scope of the problem. Sadly, this caused a minor unsubscription group from people on the Biota list who were already advanced Alife developers (I guess). But it is an emotion I wanted to capture.

The Noble Ape Simulation is regularly compared (in a negative contrast typically) with Wright's work. ''Why can't Noble Ape be more like the Sims?'' ''Noble Ape will never be half as good as the Sims!'' etc.

But my thinking is that, progressively, slowly Noble Ape as a primarily single developer work will gain properties that are improved from Wright's work... maybe ten years ago. The difference in part is the development timeframes of a single person working after hours versus teams. But ultimately it is the nature of commerce versus ideals. Interestingly enough the video clip link shows Wright is fundamentally an idealist in most aspects and in contrast a number of my interests - the genetic effects of war - are more brutally pragmatic. But I digress.

I would like to see more constructive collaboration in open source Alife. I suspect;

http://www.nobleape.com/docs/moon_monkeys.html

Moon Monkeys could be the start. But we will have to wait and see. The Apple CHUD revitalisation sub-project, summarised here;

http://mail.nobleape.com/pipermail/developer_nobleape.com/2006-March/000256.html

Is a slight step backwards. But it should lend itself to a more object oriented DLL structure for Moon Monkeys.

Ink on a Toy Soldier

Many months ago I remember thinking that Fred Reed should produce some introductory DVDs to painting toy soldiers. It was a no brainer. Getting technique information out there through the easiest possible to learn method. Books on painting tend to fail as they don't motivate brushes and don't show the subtle movements of the brush. Fred got back to me recently and said he though only the basics could be taught through this method. The rest was down to persistence and talent.

I discovered these DVDs from eBay on Friday;

http://www.steeldog.info/

Absolutely stunning. Exactly what I thought Fred should produce.

Five Minutes of Crunch

John Draper popped in for a brief stop to use the restroom and pick up a PowerBook yoyo cable last night. I haven't seen John for a number of months. He met Michele for the first time too.

We were able to pack in a condensed follow up over the time I saw him and then he was on his way. I mentioned I had met our mutual friend Bruce Damer in Santa Monica last month. Bruce and Crunch go back a few years thanks to the Digibarn and various Homebrew reunions, John attends.

I asked why there hadn't been any updates to CrunchTV. I know there were at least three episodes filmed and only the first one has ever made it online. John mumbled something about other priorities and the production company's lack of money etc. I said, ''It takes no money to upload a video.'' John agreed.

Good morning.