network computers

web browsers are in essence some form network computers. computers can be a path to information as explained very nice in this talk by eric schmidt http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl8bEApvblg

he also explains that the information industry is actually much bigger than the IT industry, and that google sees itself as an information company. Personally, I think one ingredient in a company around information, is the ability to analyse data.

there is a nice book on data analysis here: http://www.google.de/#hl=de&source=hp&q=head+first+data+analysis&btnG=Google-Suche&meta=&aq=f&oq=head+first+data+analysis&fp=c6a75e802a8b0e7

how can we get smarter?

how can we get smarter? maybe here is an interesting path:
Concept of "collaboratories"

also very interesting innovation marketing lecture by Clayton Christonson: Understand the job of what a customer is trying to accomplish

Christensen is very inspiring. Makes me popup the question if it is better to master the basics or to study with masters directly. This could make an interesting business called "growthcurve.com" where you could record what knowledge and insight you had to master to be at the point where you are now

git cheatsheet

nice little cheatsheet about git:

git cheatsheet

distributed applications

internet is all about pushing and pulling information from different places at different times. the basic idea behind this are the URL and the HTTP protocol. Also, the network gets encapsulated by the cloud concept.
An interesting variation on this seems the CouchDB project.
Here is an interesting video:
CouchDB overview

J. Chris Anderson often uses the REST concept and that he has been learning internet programming by "view source" HTML and later rails.

Here is a short tutorial on REST maybe interesting to look into one day:

PHP rest tutorial from yahoo

webapp with hobo

Hobo sounds similar to holo and it makes me remember starship Enterprise. In any case, hobo is also a framework for making CRUD application with Rails and it helped me to deploy a first experiment of an app to Heroku: electric-moon-35.heroku.com

Some ressources were helpful for learning how to do this:
* First the the heroku quickstart docs
* The docs about debugging with Heroku
* A message in a mail server on problems with plugins and installing gems: NoMethodError undefined method
* That there exists something like and authentication problems with Herokugardens
* The increasingly popular GIT version control and GIT version control

ruby experiments

wow.. had a really nice time about learning programming web-apps with rails on ruby:

* Heroku: Very convenient Hosting service heroku.com get in touch with cloud computing
* Railcasts: Very nice tricks to get ruby programs working: Railcasts.com
* Sample CRUD app: Vimeo tutorial by eric berry
* More rails tutorials: rails tutorials
* probably my first ruby book rails book

software and computers

wow, this talk is great.

why software is there, Moore's Law, entrepreneurship, relationship between software and engineering, software and business, online learning, access to information:

gates is a really a good speaker

Marketing, getting appraisal is a big part of Software.

interaction design

nice oreilly webcast:

interaction design

SQL podcasts

interesting list of SQL podcasts:

SQLDownUnder

Unit testing

eclipse webcast

especially towards the end this discussion gets interesting, testing JavaEE, Servlets, etc.

"Not care how a class does something, but only WHAT it is supposed to do."

ArrayList and parameter types

Interesting forum discussions on what it means to use a "heterogeneous collection" in Java:

forums.sun.com

Also, a reference book at google books on Java:

a google books/book on java

limits of control

Tonight I saw a nice movie by Jim Jarmusch "The Limits of Control". The movie is based on projection and mirroring concepts. The main character is just a sort of wall that allows the viewer to enter the narrative directly.

Well, apart of very nice pictures including many pieces of art, the movie gives some clues of what make virtual worlds interesting. Virtual worlds represent toy models that allow viewers to interact in ways our real world does not allow.

travel plans

from TV: VOX.de
from magazines:
elle
zeit.de
gq
vogue

basic concepts in databases

basics are important.

here is a nice short overview on why maths plays a role in database:

Youtube presentation: common sense way of expressing a relation database

academic lecture on entities

berkeley webcast honour to Jim Gray

Interview with Jim Gray

open database

catalogues = databases

I am studying for my database course M359 at the OU right now. And have to work on some lag in my study schedule. Insights so far:
1 a catalogue can be seen as a database. as such, a phone book, a prospectus, etc. can be seen as forms of databases
2 the logical views carries information which we would not have from hardware and OS perspectives on datastructures

The use of logical description in databases is a bit new to me. My understanding of logics in software always reduces to very abstract forms of symbolism, which is maybe too redustionistic here. The definition of logic in wikipedia is as follow:

Logic is the study of the principles of valid demonstration and inference. Logic is a branch of philosophy, a part of the classical trivium, as well as a branch of mathematics. The word derives from Greek λογική (logike), fem. of λογικός (logikos), "possessed of reason, intellectual, dialectical, argumentative", from λόγος logos, "word, thought, idea, argument, account, reason, or principle"

I have discovered an interesting book on the principles of database design from APress. The title is "Beginning database design" from Clare Chandler. As every good introduction, the book starts small with known matters and builds up complexity slowly. I found helpful to be reminded that simple Excel sheets are often simple forms of databases where data is collected in rows and columns. But only good database design allows to extract usefull information from many tables of data.

bit.fall project

totally amazing how algorithms can control water particles:
bit.fall project 1
bit.fall project 2

how to manage geeks

the wisdom of eric schmidt, ceo of google:

great interview with woz

about the humanistic idea in computing, design, art:

Woz interview

Interview with Daniel Tammet

Daniel Tammet is an autistic savant who was interviewed in the New Scientist on January 3rd, 2009. I found his answer on connecting human minds rewarding:

"The abilities of savants have been pigeonholed as somehow supernatural, almost inexplicable and certainly not as part of the natural continuum of human talent. This has deformed how the public and, crucially, scientists, view the brain and human potential. It is insulting and potentially dehumanising. The future is an immensely scary place, full of all kinds of challenges. We will need every kind of mind, so why not bring along every kind of intelligence?" (c) The New Scientist

Enjoy maths!

Dawkin's successor in Oxford