moon traveller herald

Expert asks if Visual Studio 2005 is too feature rich ARTICLE - In a speech entitled "Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind?" author Charles Petzold decried Visual Studio's "insistence on writing code" for developers. He criticized aspects of Visual Studio C# code generation. Yet he tentatively welcomed XAML code generation anticipated to ship with future versions of Microsoft's tool set. For its part, VisualStudio 2005 is scheduled to ship November 7. Petzold's comments follow a long tradition. The idea of pedal-to-the-metal coding closely attached to clever algorithms has long been popular with groups of C programmers. Even before C, assembler programmers similarly contented that higher levels of abstraction added overhead and sapped creativity out of programming. Although provocatively titled, Petzold's presentation was not without some fun. He prefaced his major broadsides with an amused review of the idea of "information at your fingertips" ...

For his birthday, my brother and I saw Mose Allison at Scullers in Boston. Second show, Oct 21. So glad we did! I have some of his records and consider him a great lyricist, and master of a true ethos. Quite influential. And blues oriented. But to see him! He is blues poet for sure He played so many numbers..moved quickly, getting stronger, but always cool. Did Who’s Loving You Tonight, assigning it to Robert Lockwood Jr; Seventh Son, citing Dixon. Did Buddy Johnson song. Do Nothing Til You Hear From Me. Of course his own numbers are totally unique. To hear them in essence was illuminating. This Aint Me [‘This old grey geezer”], I’m Getting There, Hello Universe, Mind on Vacation, Tell Me Something I Don’t Know... You say the world is mad You say that you've been had You don't like your part in the floor show You say it's all a bust There's no one you can trust Well, tell me something that I don't know Lefty Frizell’s If You Got the Money treated deftly. In fact, mo...

The views now possible of the globe are incredible. Of course, a generation is growing up that looks at these as nothing more than the weather. This week Wilma Hurricane hectored the U.S., before going to Yucatan. It was always there, pressing. If you recall, this was the premise behind The Whole Earth Catalog. That we had entered a new era where we could see a full picture of our place. And change our life style as a result. I saw this pic on page 1 of Boston Globe.

Came across the names John McCarthy and David Patterson this week in relation to possible resurgence of AI in the light of Stanford's victory in the DARPA cup . Patterson, along with Hennessy and John Cocke created RISC. McCarthy invented LISP and is said to have coined the term "A." Found some interesting recent works of Stanford's McCarthy in relation to Machine Intelligence. "When will we get human-level AI?" he asks. "Maybe 5 years. Maybe 500 years," he answers. Related: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/human-level-sli.pdf http://news.com.com/Stanford+wins+2+million+in+robotic+car+race/2100-11394_3-5892115.html http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/october12/stanleyfinish-100905.html

Mulatu Astatke is an Ethiopian jazz muscian who is coming to prominence as his music has served as the soundtrack for the film "Broken Flowers." If you havent heard this music, you should check it out. Clubs in Addis Ababa in the 60s and 70s were a churning confection it seems of jazz, soul, Latin all filtered through some unique Ethiopian scales. Joe Tex meets the Skatellites and Albert Ayer on a caravan. All during the last days of Sellasie. I got up with this stuff one night - the night Bobby Bonds broke Mark McGuire's home run record - in S.F. Stayed at Jim's but whole family had tix for big game. So it was me, some beer, and all Jim's great records. While they Haas crew followed America's pasttime favorite. I watched Bobbie on tube, and, as Jim's place affords view of world, I did see fireworks from the stadium by the bay when he popped it out. Great discovery was "Ethiopiques." This strange toned African by way of Memphis music. Astatke is...

There could be 15,000 Sony AIBO robotic dogs out there , but with Sony under the gun, these dogs are no safer than the vaulted works of Bill Monroe or Billie Holiday. With price tags ranging from $1,700 to $2,000, dogs have attracted a cult, but not created a market. Speculation intensified that the Tokyo-based behemoth may pull the plug on AIBO's future or scale back robotics research and development. Too expensive to be a toy, it is too unqualified to be a soldier. It’s in a rut says Application Development Trends {CASE TRENDS} founder Dan Kara. "The AIBO is kind of stuck," said Dan Kara, president of Robotics Trends , a consulting firm in Northborough, Mass. and the sponsor of RoboNexus. "It can't really be a commodity consumer product because it's too expensive. They aren't robust enough for the military. It's more of a research tool." Dan knows whereof he speaks. But it seems like the time to call in Issac Assimov. Maybe Ray Kurzweil could ...

Number 9, Number 9 

The whole family sat down and watched Dylan the American Master miniseries on PBS last month. As I suspect many of the Whole Sick Crew across America did too. It was very fulsome, Lowell. I liked the considerable access to Dylan..and the characters he grew up with. Tony Glover, Paul Nelson, Al Ginsberg [mighta liked to have heard from Bobby Vee], Maria Muldar [the Jug Band footage was priceless], Liam Clancy and Dave Van Ronk... all of interest. Footage of influencers Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie eerie. Fun:Van Ronk desribes how Dylan took his version of House of the Rising Sun and kind of hurt his feelings..and how he couldnt play it anymore..and how gladly he chorttled when Eric Burton and the Amimals took it .. so that Dylan couldnt play it anymore. The bits on the cold snowy Midwest resonated...and him listening to radio signals in the night. The influence of cabaret show biz on his style [by way of people he shared bills with] became more apparent as it did in Chronicles. It s...

Jeff DeMark and family and I encountered this orb one day on the Boston Commons. 

Lately I've heard Elmore James anew. He could fix on a single note, but make it ring. Shame he died at 45, his heart exploded, with little mention. But he was in approach to music acutely aware somehow of a universal harmonics, a chord Elysium. And no one had it better. One extended chord that came up from Afrik to Greece by way of Hawaii and Mississippi. Circled the globe, Jack. No one dug more into the musical values of electric signals though they still be trying. Always felt: ''It was Elmore James invented musical electricity.'' But the one-note-ness of Elmore I'd kind of come to take for granted as a limitation. The note bloomed, expanded, of late. Who knows why? There is a ringing wood chime at my neighbors where I park my car, and all of music can be spawned from it essential sound. Dust my Blues too is inevitable. Fleetwood Mac you know I've been listening too, I mean what they now call the Original Fleetwood Mac with Peter Green. I was under-astound...