Impact Analysis

Back in San Diego

2009-10-28T18:19:00.003+01:00

Our European adventure is over. I'm back at work in San Diego. Photos of our time in Italy and France are on Flickr and Picasa.

Early Trento, Italy photos: Flickr: Trento Set

Trentino, Venice, and SW France photos: Picasa Sets

l'Aveyron.

2009-08-19T17:51:00.004+02:00

Spending the month of August in southwestern France. We are housesitting for some friends.

Feel like testing your legs?

2009-07-07T14:07:00.004+02:00

Vineyard road in Faedo, Italy.

Gothic High-Tech and Favela Chic

2009-07-04T12:34:00.005+02:00

A video worth watching. Bruce Sterling's closing talk at the Reboot Conference in Copenhagen: http://video.reboot.dk/video/486788/bruce-sterling-reboot-11

I think he has the structure of the next 10 years pretty close to right. We're not going to get shiny new environmentally constructed buildings. We're going to be repurposing the abandoned hulks of the 20th century.

As for his views on stuff (basically, get rid of it), Kathy and I are already a long way down that path. Everything we own fits in a few suitcases. We left nothing in the US when we moved here to Italy. It is also easily argued the the most important real estate in my life is virtual.

Cyber-stalking Bruce Sterling, continued.

2009-06-23T11:43:00.004+02:00

Searching for reviews of his latest book, Caryatids, I came across another fascinating interview on Futurismic. A couple quotes:

It feels like you’ve wrapped up the Viridian Newsletters with a tentative sense of “Mission Accomplished” on climate change awareness. Would that be a fair comment?

No. I wrapped it up more in the position of a guy who was doing some spy work on the ground and who split before the heavy bombers arrived.

...

On the flipside, what about underrated good stuff: what makes you feel positive about the potential of the next few decades?

I don’t even do “positive” and “negative” potential. I sincerely think that attitude makes people actively stupid about the future.

Always interesting, Bruce Sterling.

Futurist art in Rovereto.

2009-06-20T11:18:00.003+02:00

Yesterday we took a trip to Rovereto, a town about 25km south of Trento, to go to the MART (Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento). Well worth the trip. Their permanent collection was unavailable due to a large exhibit on Cold War Art and Design, which turned out to be pretty interesting. We plan to go back in a couple weeks and see the permanent collection after it is reopened.

We also took the time to go to the Museum of the Futurist painter and designer Fortunato Depero. Also, well worth the trip.

Best MySpace suggestion ever.

2009-06-18T12:17:00.002+02:00

From Bruce Sterling:

Let Sweden buy MySpace and hire PirateBay to run it as a public utility.

Makes total sense.

Nearest Neighbors

2009-06-13T19:35:00.003+02:00

Here is an abstract painting my wife did several days ago. I appropriated it and named it Nearest Neighbors. Should be cover art for a scifi book. I like it a lot.

Not abandoned.

2009-06-13T12:07:00.003+02:00

If you use your blog to link to a story about abandoned blogs, that means your blog is not abandoned. Right?

Since the postdoc ended I've just been laying around Trento riding my bike, watching bike racing online, and watching my wife paint. In August we will stay in France for a month and then back to San Diego. It's a good life.

Touring in Trentino.

2009-04-06T19:11:00.003+02:00

Took a short bike ride south of Trento today, through Villazano, Valsorda, almost to Vigolo. From the south of Trento to Vigolo is all up hill -- about a 5 mile long grade. Not really bad, but not too easy. Perfect training. Here are some photos.

Mt. Bondone, across the Adige valley. This if from a little ways up the climb, just past Castello.

We stopped to eat a little and look around. Then we started the real climb.

This is looking back down the hill on SS349. Next photo is from the same spot.

Looking uphill. It's steep.

At the top of this grade you reach a kind of a high valley. There are two passes out of this valley, but we had our training in and turned around for the downhill home.

Yet another change of plans.

2009-04-02T14:55:00.005+02:00

Trentino is a wonderful place. It's historic, beautiful, and filled with amazing people, great wine, and grappa. But, the work has not gone well. The best fix for the time-being is for me to leave LiquidPub and move back to the US. So, I'll be winding down this week, and then wife and I will be taking awhile to explore the Dolomites before we return. Disappointing, would be an understatement.

I wouldn't want to be a member of any club that would have me.

2009-03-06T11:26:00.003+01:00

With apologies to Groucho. But, here's a cult I need to join. The Cult of Done.

A little clarification from Bruce Sterling

2009-03-01T16:46:00.003+01:00

Bruce Sterling must surely be one of the most clear-sighted individuals in our world at the moment.

I've never seen so much panic around me, but panic is the last thing on my mind. My mood is eager impatience. I want to see our best, most creative, best-intentioned people in world society directly attacking our worst problems. I'm bored with the deceit. I'm tired of obscurantism and cover-ups. I'm disgusted with cynical spin and the culture war for profit. I'm up to here with phony baloney market fundamentalism. I despise a prostituted society where we put a dollar sign in front of our eyes so we could run straight into the ditch.

Cory Doctorow is worried.

2009-02-18T11:22:00.003+01:00

Cory Doctorow on BoingBoing asks How are you coping with collapse-anxiety?

My response is:

The future is obviously bicycles and squatting.

Regardless of what actually ends up happening, the most important thing (as it always has been) is having a wide circle of good friends. This will get you through anything.

Photos and discussion notes on the LiquidPub wiki.

2009-02-08T16:26:00.003+01:00

Photos contributed by participants and a link to the raw notes from the panel discussions have been posted on the Snow Workshop wiki page.

Enjoy.

Trento bank story n.2

2009-02-06T12:49:00.004+01:00

Earlier I posted a story about my first try at opening a bank account. I needed a mobile phone to complete the process so I had to get one and come back the next day. The line in the mobile phone store was another learning experience in Italian culture.

So, I returned to the bank branch, mobile phone in hand. Through the man-trap, and up to a teller. The teller was a very nice young lady who spoke zero English. I pointed to the guy from the day before and he told her what I needed. As she was doing the paperwork an older lady came in and engaged in the same wandering-around behavior as they old guy the day before. There were several people in line, but she came up beside me and started talking to the teller. The young teller listened for about a second and then said something in a very sharp tone of voice to the older woman. I think the gist of it was "go stand in line." The old woman raised her voice a little in response and then the teller just went off on her. Many sentences of loud, sharp sounding Italian. I couldn't believe it. Then the lady went and stood in line, and the teller rolled her eyes and went back to my paperwork like nothing had happened. That was two days in a row. I was beginning to think this is normal.

Last week I was in that branch again and they have dispensed with the ropes and line. They installed one of those take-a-number things and each teller has a little LED display beside their window.

LiquidPub Workshop and Grappa

2009-02-02T22:01:00.002+01:00

I just got back from the LiquidPub Snow Workshop in the Dolomites. It was a great time with many interesting and very nice people. The last night of the workshop several of us pored over some questions posed by Gloria Origgi. After dinner we retired to the bar to drink grappa and red wine. You can see the results on Stefano's blog.

He also took this picture of me that I like.

The reason I look confused is because they were discussing quantum theory. Or perhaps it was the Welsh language. I find them both very confusing.

Why are SOA's and SoS's hard?

2009-01-20T17:48:00.005+01:00

Why is it hard to build, maintain, and understand Service-Oriented Architectures and Systems-of-Systems?

The usual catch-all is: complexity. But, what is it that makes them complex? Size and the number of interacting components is an obvious answer, but it's deeper than that. The deeper reasons are that these systems are dynamic, open, late-bound, and non-deterministic. Even a small system that possesses these four characteristics would be considered complex.

So next time you are wondering why you have to deal with directories-of-directories and meta-meta-data, think about these four deeper reasons.

Dynamic: the components in the system are always changing. New components join and old components leave at arbitrary times.

Open: components we've never seen before can show up and ask to interact. Components we've been using can disappear forever, without warning.

Late-bound: we don't know the name or location of any component until we try to use it.

Non-deterministic: the information returned may be different each time, even when we ask the same question.

Social networks and the world.

2009-01-20T16:17:00.004+01:00

In an earlier post I commented that the world is a network, not a tree. I'm more convinced of this than ever. And further, I think that any application that aims to help people work in the real world needs to respect that underlying structure. People naturally form social networks in their work and relationships, so any application that doesn't respect that structure will be constantly creating its own friction.

So. What are the best frameworks for building social-networks?

Peer-review, again.

2009-01-10T08:40:00.003+01:00

The Scholarly Kitchen has some good posts (via the Lib-License list).

Updates on M. S. El Naschie:
Elsevier Math Editor Controversy
Self-Publishing Editor to Retire

Another problem:
Peer-Review Scandal Shakes French Geologists

Peer-review is like most human systems, neither sacred or worthless, and subject to manipulation if left unattended.

Problems of prestige and honor.

2008-12-26T20:01:00.005+01:00

I'm involved with trying to change the peer-review process for scientific literature. The current system is fraught with problems, but it's entrenched so it's very hard to change. Given my interest a couple of recent postings, The Case of M. S. El Naschie from Reddit and Crackpot Scandal In Mathematics on Slashdot are very interesting.

There are various well-known ways of gaming the system but, if true, this guy seems to have seized the commanding heights of his field for himself. There really can't be any unsurprising explanation for all this, true or not.

Long Tail = Wishful Thinking

2008-12-24T08:09:00.003+01:00

Sorry Chris. It's going to be a little more complicated than that.

But then, wishful thinking was pretty much Chris Anderson's business all along.

Snow in Trento

2008-12-11T12:32:00.004+01:00

In Piazza Fiera, Trento.

Click on the photo for a larger version. We've had about a foot of snow here. This photo was taken about 6pm last night. Now it's raining and everything is a mess.

Here is Via Belenzani from the Duomo in Trento

Cyber-stalking Bruce Sterling.

2008-11-30T17:40:00.004+01:00

“How can you rob a bank in a world without money?” wonders science fiction writer Bruce Sterling, one of the collaborators of the new foresight project KashKlash.

Seriously. I just read the guy's Wired blog. Add it to your feed.

He's an endlessly fascinating guy.

Change of plans.

2008-11-26T18:27:00.005+01:00

So, keeping this blog for non-work related interests has sort of back-fired since I no longer really have any non-work related interests. The postdoc has effectively absorbed all time available. Which is fine. It's the most interesting project I've ever been a part of.

It really is fascinating. You can read all about it at Liquid Publications Project website.

The result is I will probably start blogging about Liquid Publications and related topics a lot.

Although, I did just get a new bicycle...

This was taken beside the bike path in south Trento. That's the Adige River behind it.