Kim Bach . Org

Friday I went to the Science Fair - dubbed Science After Dark - that was held at Copenhagen City Hall Square (Københavns Rådhusplads), and I enjoyed it very much. I didn’t really know what to expect, but when I read that there would be live electronic music, I knew that I was going.

The first thing i noticed was that attendance, despite the location, was disappointingly low. I feel that it was because the venue looked quite uninviting, due to the fence, and the rather closed looking pavilions.

I also got the feeling that the PR for the Science Fair had been less than satisfactory.

ConDio - Controlling Audio

Anyway, the first thing that grasped my eye was the ConDio, Controlling Audio. The ConDio is a device with which you can control the playback of sound, simply by moving physical bricks around on a table surface. The ConDio uses pattern recognition to determine the position of the different blocks, which translates into a specific function, for instance one brick changes the track that is being played, others applies filters.

It’s remarkably simple, efficient and intuitive to control a computer in this fashion, and it was a real crowd puller.

The ConDio has been developed by the medialogy branch of the University of Aalborg, and It was really great talking to the students that were responsible for the project. They were really feeding from the enthusiasm of the people that were looking at it.

I’m really envious that the students of today get to play with technology like this, to quote Haladjjan, the founder of Violet (manufacturer of the Nabaztag intelligent WiFi bunny):

“le début de l’internet a été une aimable kermesse… Maintenant les choses sérieuses commencent” - (translation: “the beginning of the Internet has been a friendly festival…Now the serious stuff begins”.

What a great time in history to be alive in.

Kim Bach - The failed scientist

I also enjoyed visiting the Bio Chemistry tent, where I had a discussion about how to bring science to the public (”videnskabs formidling”). The scientist in charge asked me it I’ve heard about Jens Martin Knudsen - and the regular reader would know that I just posted a tribute to him - we need more like him - since he was able to bring across complicated matters in lay-mans terms - we also discussed the great Richard Dawkins.

What I really hope is that someone could take up the reins from Jens Martin Knudsen, because we need those positive role-models from the scientific community to teach us the importance of understanding our world.

I also had a chance to redeem myself. I label my self a “failed scientist”. I’m really a product of the inspiration of the space program and the lunar missions, and when I was a kid, I desperately wanted to become a scientist - but “something” happened along the way - and it’s too complicated to talk about here - but I basically got fed up with boring educational system.

But it does seem like I have some basic scientific intuition, and I got some high marks from “the teacher” for thinking like a scientist, when I was observing the strange creature the Daphnia.

It was also interesting talking to the students from the Nano technology line. They’re looking into how to produce solar arrays that are less harsh on the environment, it turns out that you can use fruit juice from black berries as the base of a solar cell, instead of silicon - amazing.

Bend my circuits

But what I really enjoyed the most, was the tent dedicated to audio, which also included live performances from Dødskuglen, Rumpistol and Bjørn Svin (who I missed).

In the tent some interesting and simple demonstrators were set up, one was a Theremin that was controlled by a plant. You could actually play music by touching the leaves of the plant - very entertaining. Another was a tube with a number of nozzles from which gas could escape, and be lit, if you then played music, the sound-waves would modulate the flames - Daft Punk’s Robot Rock looked quite good “going up in flames”.

Dødskuglen plays with circuit bending, and they had gutted a lot of electronics with audio capabilities, for instance a couple of Furbys, that now looked - and sounded - like mean birds, and when you hooked them up to a keyboard, they were capable of making some wonderful noise.

Dødskuglen has their name from a dome shaped device, that is the center-piece of their show. According to them it’s filled with gutted electronics from Happy Meals and the like - I’m not surprised.

We also got a live demonstration of how to circuit bend - don’t try this at home - you might hit the AC power-supply and die - but if you’re careful, just take a cheap electronic keyboard apart, and try to apply some wire patches live - it was amazing to hear how the standard drum-machine suddenly went into a completely different state, and sounded completely different, only to return to it’s standard loop after being reset.

Kim Bach - The failed musician

After Dødskuglen, Rumpistol took the stage, and he’s using his computer in combination with analogue synthesisers to produce great electronica.

Besides being a failed scientist, I also consider myself a failed musician, but with the simple technology being showcased here, that is so much more fun and intuitive to control than a traditional instrument, I might be able to express myself - I know that I have some music in my head - maybe I can finally make some music - I know that I want a copy of the guitar simulator for the Nintendo DS called Jam Sessions.

A child’s mind

There’s a strange unifying synergy between science and music. When doing science and music, you really need to have a child’s mind, and like to play. That’s something I still, I’d say increasingly, possess - so I might still become a scientist/musician. It’s also noteworthy that a number of my heroes for instance RMS (Richard Stallman) and N (Peter Naur), actually play music themselves.

I went home after having had a great time, with renewed faith in our educational system, it seems to be producing playful scientists - I wished someone had told me that science was about playing, when I was a student.

I hope that Science After Dark will become a recurring event.

Show your <3 for science - make some NOIIIIISSSSSEEEEE!!!

I did, however, hear some rumours the Science After Dark has been frowned upon from the established scientific community. Come down from your ivory towers, Science is FUN and NOISY. Show your <3 for Science - make some NOIIIIISSSSSEEEEE!!!

Bad Penguin - Click here for the most popular videos

So I thought that Linux was ready for prime time, but not just yet - it was hurting my productivity too much :-(. I need some help setting my system up, and will attempt to get that when I soon will attend LinuxParty in Roskilde.

It did make for a couple of interesting Jaiku presense stream though (Kim Bach: Former Mac user and Installing Ubuntu on my new Lenovo V100 - Firefox on WiFi from the Live CD while my drive partitions. Have I died and gone to heaven?.

Performance of the applications is really great though, and I hit on one of the biggest obstacles, non-functioning DVD playback due to patent issues - really amazing that the International anti-thrust organisations haven’t looked into that :-(.

I hope to return to the Linux world soon, Ubuntu keeps improving

But the future really lies in simpler technology, and “the puck” is moving elsewhere than the monolithic computer. My mobile is increasingly my primary Internet access terminal, and Apple might just have got it right with the iPhone. The iPhone is actually much more Linux than people realise, it’s powered by FreeBSD and contains source code form from several open source projects, most noticeably KHTML which is the basis for the Safari browser.

Overheard during Software Freedom Day 2007, September 15th in Copenhagen, Denmark:

I don’t know much about Linux! And you’re an open source activist?

(more…)

Kim Bach – Music at Last.fm

Does this mean that I’m a musician…For clues that I have some way to go, look no further.

Welcome to ICT Mythbusters Episode One - who needs prequels, start your numbering scheme at one!

ICT Mythbusters is inspired by the great Discovery show Mythbusters

It’s also premiering a new concept in advertising that will revolutionise it:

Commercials that the host - in this case me - don’t make any money from, so click the banner and support the REAL Mythbusters, if you want to me support, send me some money ;-).

Was Bill Gates wrong?

A very famous quote from Bill Gates is:

640KB of RAM should be enough for everyone

Everybody has been laughing at that statement, but was he actually right?

I can access the web in high-fidelity from my Nintendo DS, and any modern phone with Java ME can run the Opera mini browser, and these phones rarely have more than 1MB of RAM. I’d say that approximately 4MB should be enough for everyone.

So Bill Gates was right, or? Why is it that he wasn’t? It’s of course because we’ve moved our storage to the server, as a college of mine was so friendly to point out - actually I think he was quite annoyed with me - but that’s only because he didn’t understand what I meant.

The desktop and portable computer is an anachronism, as I’ve written before, and we need to move ALL the storage to the server - where it belongs, and run only thin clients. VERY thin clients would actually suffice for something like 90+ percent of the worlds business users.

So yes my college is right, yes 640K isn’t enough for everyone, neither is 4MB, but how much is then?

And we’re talking server storage, to cater to the computing needs of the entire world, at the time, not considering the more than exponential growth we’re likely to se in the future.

Help me do the math, or should I just submit it to Jamie, Adam, Toby, Grant and the red-hot Kari.

So you thought you could build an economy on other peoples work, and even have the audacity to charge them (that is us) for it!!!

Well! You have your “Pyramid” - and it’s beautiful - unfortunately for you we‘ve just invented the “Arch”.

So Google will remain a fantastic monument, but we‘re building the Aqueducts, Viaducts and last but not least the beautiful temples.

And how come Google and all the other search engines, seems to ignore the copyright all together? No let’s boycott Google, and ask to be delisted, or have them block commericals.

So let’s put Google and all the SEO “creeps” out of business, and get rid of the commercial search engine, “itsy bitsy spider, walk along the web” - it’s not that hard to build a better google than google. Where we’re going we don’t need Google.

Civilisation has just gone out of beta!

LinuxParty - LinuxParty
LinuxParty kan måske blive sjovt i år

Da jeg skal til at “spise hundemad”, har jeg seriøst brug for hjælp, hvad mon der sker hvis man medbringer en “pristine” Vista maskine, og slipper nørderne løs med at gøre den til den sejeste Linux kværn i byen!

Jeg skal nok give et par omgange gutter!

Thomas Stabell » Blogarkiv » Man må ryste på hovedet…

Thomas rapporterer fra en håbløs hverdag, om sine kvaler med totalt misforstået IT sikkerhedspolitik, og det er desværre nogle misforståelser som er hverdag for de fleste i Danmark, og som de affinder sig med.

Her er hvordan Thomas indleder sin fremragende blog-post:

I ens hverdag bliver man udsat for mange sjove og til tider underlige hændelser. På min uddannelse har de fundet en række personer fra det ydre rum til at varetage skolens IT. Det betyder bla. at…

Og så kommer der en lang liste der burde være et wake-up call. “Det ydre rum”…LOL…Det er vist mere helvede

Tag sagen i egen hånd - bliv “frihedskæmper”

Thomas: Mht. manglende trådløs adgang, så er løsningen er at smugle nogle trådlåse routere ind, og slutte dem til, det kan f.eks. være fra FON - der er INGEN der vil opdage det - jeg kigger gerne forbi og “glemmer” et par.

Det er faktisk en ide jeg har haft længe - at “bryde ind” hos firmaer og institutioner der ikke har WiFi, og efterlade trådløse routere. Der kan gå MEGET længe før de bliver opdaget, de kunne jo tro at du bare var på et nabo-netværk

Nægt herefter at anvende latterlige ting som Intranet, kopier i stedet informationen til steder der kan nås fra “Skyen”.

Fat mod Thomas

I dag er det Software Freedom Day. Spred ordet, og organiser et Team Århus til næste år.

Selv deltager jeg i København, hvor jeg vil være at finde på Amagertorv, ved Illums fra kl. 10:00 til 14:00.

Kig forbi og få en gratis Ubuntu CD, og en snak om det åbne og frie alternativ.

Jeg tvivler på at der er andre end mig der har en PowerPC version med - og dem fremstiller jeg selv, og min kære PowerBook - som sandsynligvis snart bliver en ren Ubuntu maskine - vil være at se.

I mellemtiden kan i nyde billederne fra sidste år, og jeps! Det er min PowerBook, nørderne havde ALDRIG set Ubuntu på en Mac, og de var pænt interesserede

Jaiku can be very (understatement) inspirational, and this time I managed to inspire my favourite muse, Henriette, to write a great blog-post, despite her being sick.

Web avant-garde » Blog Archive » the pulsefrequency of the brain (and it’s effect on creativity and incubation)

I wrote this on Jaiku to thank her:

Thanks, very nice!!! It was sort of a “thank you”. Remember some months ago you asked about ideas on how to be creative, and I just started blogging like a madman… I’ll think of a worthy comment, but I do need to catch some alpha-waves - surfs up - ahem down…

First Henriette asks this question:

so what do YOU love to do ? and are you doing it when you are taking time off ?

Henriette loved this:

This weekend I took my favorite man and went on a mental training workshop by Susan Ekberg. It was a real mental kick and I got so much out of it. Among other things she talked about the pulsefrequency of the brain which I want to share with ya’ll.

So I promised her a “worthy” answer:

This is (one thing) that I love - when not catching Alpha Waves (which I try to practice Yoga Nidra to achieve), or walking and/or biking in nature.

I love to ponder the future, technology, and how it can finally help humanity evolve. Today it has mostly made us slaves - the production lines has never run faster than today, despite talk about a “spare-time society” - where you aren’t a slave.

So here goes “nothing“:

Henriette mentions “Collective Intelligence”, this is a subject I’ve been trying to brew up a blog-post on, since July. It’s, tentatively, titled “Building a framework for (online) knowledge sharing“.

(more…)

Mobile Monday Denmark
I just rediscovered Mobile Monday - I’ll be lurking for a while (Jaiku is a great lurking tool ;-))

MobileMonday is a community of mobile professionals. The open community promotes the mobile industry and fosters cooperation and networking among industry people and their companies by providing opportunities for personal and virtual contacts.