John Maeda is offering some limited edition prints on his site to raise funds for victims of the South Asian tsunami. I’d love to buy one, but unfortunately he is only shipping to addresses in the USA.  Would anyone in the US being willing to buy one on my behalf and send it on to Helsinki? (I would pay the additional postage, of course)

UPDATE: thanks to Ben Cerveny, who is sortin’ it for me…

I really need to learn the finnish for:

"Excuse me, taxi-driver, but would you mind not driving so fast through the snow and ice and traffic whilst text-messaging? Thank-you."

Perhaps I should feed it to folksonomy of the moment: 43 things.

Where’s V when we need him?

Dan told me that my favourite radio programme, Melvyn Bragg’s “In Our Time” is now available in MP3 format direct from the BBC. Ironically perhaps the first mp3’d programme discusses the discovery of electricity!

This is extremely good news… and great that the BBC are putting out high-quality original programming that they own the rights to, in flexible, non-DRM’d formats.

Now Dan, you just need to convince Melv and his merry band of academics to wrap their MP3’d thoughts in one of the newly launched UK CC licences, so that thousands of school multimedia projects around the country can resound with their honeyed tones…

I think I’m going to write him an email…

—-
UPDATE:
Just looked at the licence text on the download page, which says:

“You may not download, edit, or use this file for the purpose of promoting, advertising, endorsing or implying a connection with you (or any third party) and the BBC”

Does that mean that editing or using the file for something, like a school project, say is perfectly fine?

I know the Stephenson interview is being linked to hell, but this passage is priceless; especially with Sterling now taking up residency as Emeritus Professor of Spimes at Art Center, Pasadena:

Before long my sword arm hung useless at my side. One of my psi blasts kicked up a large divot of earth and rubble, uncovering a silver metallic object, hitherto buried, that seemed to have been crafted by an industrial designer. It was a nitro-veridian device that had been buried there by Sterling. We were able to fly clear before it detonated. The blast caused a seismic rupture that split off a sizable part of Canada and created what we now know as Vancouver Island. This was the last fight between me and Gibson. For both of us, by studying certain ancient prophecies, had independently arrived at the same conclusion, namely that Sterling’s professed interest in industrial design was a mere cover for work in superweapons. Gibson and I formed a pact to fight Sterling. So far we have made little headway in seeking out his lair of brushed steel and white LEDs, because I had a dentist appointment and Gibson had to attend a writers’ conference, but keep an eye on Slashdot for any further developments.

» Slashdot: interview with Neal Stephenson

One of my favourite radio shows, “In our time”, in which each week an expert panel debates the history of an idea, is back after the summer.

In the trailer for the series on BBC Radio 4, Melvyn says that this run they’re going to cover:

• Pi
• The Cambrian Explosion
• The Odyssey
• Agincore Agincourt (thanks, Nick…)
• Gnosticism
• Satre

Excellent.
—-
UPDATE: The Melv is already back in the saddle with the first In Our Time newsletter of the season following up the programme on Pi:

“…here is a mnemonic which is very relevant:“How I want a drink – alcoholic, of course – after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics. One is, yes, adequate – even enough to produce some fun and pleasure – for an instant, miserably brief.”

Something to sing in the bath. This could be said to describe my state, but it is also a way in which you can remember the first 32 digits of pi. The number of letters in consecutive words gives the corresponding number in pi. Therefore, how=3, I=1, want=4, a=1, drink=5, alcoholic=9, etc until we get 3.141592653589793238462643 ad infinitum.

This was produced by Professor Kaplan but, alas, there was no time for it on the programme and, therefore, I offer it to all those of you who contribute to the first newsletter of the new season. I’m glad to be back with the programme and I hope you can remember this mnemonic for future reference.

Best wishes

Melvyn Bragg”

Minna tells me that Nokia Lifeblog Beta (Windows PC only, I’m afraid) is available for download here, as is the s60 client for the Nokia 7610.

As the website says, if you don’t have that phone (as I didn’t for a while) you can still use the PC app, which imports jpgs quite happily.

I’ve been using it since May, and it makes for a lovely digital shoebox.

UPDATE: Just noticed you can win a futurephone by giving the Lifeblog team your feedback:

“From now until September 30, 2004, submitting a bug report gives you the chance to walk away with a Nokia 7610 or 6630 imaging phone. The best, most comprehensive report wins! “

Damn – I’d love a 6630, and I’ve been using Lifeblog enough to put in a pretty good report already, but something gives me the feeling I’m not elligible… 😉

» Nokia Lifeblog: Download Beta

Rough visualisation in Illustrator by multiplying font size by number of entries per tag, then placing them without much care.

My favourite apophenic archipeligo = “search situationist smarthomes strategy”

Since moving to Typepad I’ve notice that posting a blog entry is more like handing in your homework, at a particularly strict school run by ascetic ex-Jesuits expelled from the order for their extremism. I keep getting comments telling me off for my self-indulgence and lack of intellectual rigour.

Admitted, I have the intellectual rigour of a frisbee. And perhaps these networked doses of cod-liver oil comments are good for me, making me a better writer or thinker. Or maybe not. Maybe this is all self-indulgence and should remain so for my sanity.

Anyway – I have removed the “recent comments” feature from the sidebar in the hope of reducing the ‘pile-on’ that happens.

The “recent comments” module appears to be a default setting in Typepad, and as a design pattern it is very successful for bootstrapping conversations on a personal website and keeping them alive. In switching from moveabletype to typepad, I thought that the effects of the default design patterns would have been noticeable, but aside from this comments amplification “pile-on” effect, I can’t think of anything else.

This over-riding feeling that Typepad’s defaults have turned writing here into a chore for me maybe just be a comparison effect of using more lightweight, life-recording, “spooling” systems, such as Nokia Lifeblog, del.icio.us and Flickr.