trisweb.com

It’s been way too long since trisweb.com had a facelift, so I decided to change it back to blue and add some new stylings and photos for the header. Many of them are from my recent trip to Europe, or just random other photos that looked good up there. Check out my gallery for more.

This design has served me well for many years with little changes here and there. Let me know how you like this latest iteration. Thanks!

I was forced against my will (child labor) to mow my parents’ lawns, and while I was pushing the mower around in circles (some people go back and forth, some go diagonally—I’m a spiral mower myself) I got to thinking about my Artificial Intelligence class at Berkeley and how I was basically ridiculed for saying that Intelligence is complex!

I guess it sounds like an ignorant viewpoint for a computer scientist to have. Intelligence is complex—or should it be just a very powerful computer with the right program? It seems to me like most people in the strong AI group think this way; that it’s just a lot of complicated parts needing independent solutions and some putting-together. This view is almost required to believe it can be done in the first place! I do believe it can be done—in fact, I believe the only way it can be done is the way it already has. We need to simulate the evolution of a strong AI and all its sources—essentially, us. I believe the evolutionary processes of an intelliegence—artificial or not—are as important as the end result.

My friend Robert works at Dreamworks animation studios, so I went with some friends to see his latest work, “Flushed Away” the other night. I must say, I was very surprised. It was hilarious and fun, not at all what I had expected. I mean, it looks like a cheesy rip-off of Pixar’s new movie Ratatouille, right? (Seriously, is it just me, or is it weird that there seem to be two versions of the same themed movie always coming out around the same time? Two “penguin movies” are on their way, two “rat movies,” two “bug movies” a few years back… grant-theft marketing if you ask me). Fortunately, beyond a socialite rat as the main character, the two movies probably don’t have much in common.

The movie is genuinely funny. By that I mean it doesn’t avoid clichéd humor or repetition for cheap laughs; in fact it masters both. It seems like the writers took their cheesy plot (admittedly) and ran with it, just having a blast and having fun with their characters, which is really what comes across. I was laughing hysterically at more than a few scenes and jokes—they don’t even try to be PC, it’s great. The animation is also good, a great mix of Wallace and Grommit-like claymation (done on the computer of course) with a touch of added realism and fluidity. It matches the story well.
So, I thought I’d never say this, but if you’re looking for a fun movie, go see it! It’s a blast. The kids will love it too I’m sure.

And for Robert, I totally saw your name in the credits! Awesome job on that, uh… one scene

Trying to install a new hard disk in my laptop, I found my way to some MS support article. I found this in it…

“To boot from the shadow of a broken mirror.”

Seriously now, tell me someone didn’t sneak that language in there. Or at least I’d think that if it wasn’t followed by “Please note that you may need to modify the Boot.ini file to do this.”

Parakey is a upcoming “Web OS” by one of the original developers of Firefox (some teenage kid) that seamlessly integrates the local desktop with the remote server. It does this by using a small server running on the desktop along with the remote web application to keep everything synchronized; work offline, work online, and everything’s still up-to-date.

I just want to say I have a whole notebook of ideas about making an OS for the web, and three or four pages were dedicated to this very problem. I’m just glad someone had time to get around to implementing it!

Some of the ideas sound hokey (like the sharing “keys”) but this should be a sign of things to come, with most user data residing on servers, and thin web clients all over the place to access and manipulate it. All that’s needed past that are various levels of cache (possibly full mirroring) for when you’re not connected, which is always going to be a possibility. A web-centric, connectivity-aware computing environment. Not too far off I don’t think. Anyone want to get started? I’m game.