Got to the end of Pattern Recognition. Started well but thought it ended a bit simply and in a bit of a rush. Could have done with at least one twist to the plot. Was almost like the end of Star Wars 3 with everybody gathered happily together. Oh well, All Tomorrow's Parties is looking pretty good.
***Imported from old blog***
Cosmos 1 is a prototype solar sail whip which uses 14m long sails and the solar wind to propel itself through near solar space. It's due for launch in October. One of its neatest features though is that it is being launched on a SLBM from a Russian nuclear submarine - eat your heart out Sky-One. Cosmos-1 is part funded by The Planetary Society, co-founded by space visionary Carl Sagan.
***Imported from old blog***
Jeff Bezos of Amazon is financing Blue Origin, a space tourism venture - and most minimal web site. Blue Origin could be a contender for the X-Prize - which will be awarded to the first private manned spacecraft to launch twice in 2 weeks. Neal Stephenson of Snowcrash fame is also a Bezos friend and confidant.
Another Dot Com Billionaire backed X-prize venture is SpaceShipOne, above, from Scaled Composites - backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Spaceship one made its firt glide from its White Knight mothership on 7 Aug 03.
Scaled have been using a Beechcraft Starship , above, as a chase plane.
***Imported from old blog***
Just back from a week in Snowdonia in North Wales with the family. Very hot - must un-Snowdon like. Did three of the 3000' peaks, camped up at 2000' with Joanna, swam in cold lakes and rivers. Great time.
***Imported from old blog***
Since this blog is meant to be about cyberstuff I suppose my Girl Friday's ought to be virtual, so:
 | Yuna Yuna is the summoner from Final Fantasy X. Yuna is a japanese name. It's pronounced with a long U and short A. It's a girl's name, it means "night" and also is the name of a flower, a hibiscus (hibiscus is a tropical flower) that can be found in places like Okinawa. she is a Summoner and daughter of a Great Summoner . Summoners are people who decide to bring peace to the Spira people , by defeating Sin and they learn how to invoke sacred Beasts called Aeons. Yuna has a large number of web shrines. OK so she got in twice! |
 | Major Motoko Kusanagi The lead character in Ghost in the Shell. An andriod with a "ghost" brain. |
 | Rachel Leeds Max Steel's partner and N-Tek agent in the Max Steel TV CGI animated series. |
 | Kyoko Date (aka DK-96) The first idoru - a virtual Japanese pop star created by HoriPro Inc. |
 | Aki Ross Lead character from The Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within CGI film. |
 | Yuna Lead character from Final Fantasy X. Picked up on her from the superb Final Fantasy X/Skater Boy Amine Music Video by Cass Morgan. Superb. |
There's even a Miss Digital World competition now.
***Imported from old blog***
A little late I know but I finally got around to seeing Matrix Reloaded. Expectations having been set suitably low by the reviews I was pleasantly surprised. The white "matrix" images of Zion Control were beautiful and the whole "life as a programme" proposition kept going well. Some of the fight scenes could have been shorter though......
***Imported from old blog***
This is more like it. KurzweilAI.net collects the thoughts of Ray Kurzweil, he of synthesisers and speech programs, and is hardly suprisingly about AI and future tech. Includes a fairly basic Virtual Personality - Ramona - who seems at first glance not as advanced as the one I was working on a couple of years ago. Time to dig Halo out of the cupboard.
***Imported from old blog***
