Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

And for the few people who were asking about the Haskell talk I attended last week, you can read about pretty much everything that was discussed here.

Previously due to my German course on Thursday evenings I couldn’t attend any of the Haskell group’s events. Now, happily, I can. =)

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Filed under: Coding, Computer Science, Haskell, Programming, Technology

Neo4j And Connected Data

Author: Aasemoon

2 May

A few weeks ago I attended a very informative [as well as extremely funny] tech talk titled “Neo4j And Connected Data“. During the presentation Jim Webber made a mention of his new book called “Graph Databases”, which is available to download from here.

During the past weeks I’ve had a chance to have a better look into the book, and simply put, I like it! =) For anyone interested in the relevant topics, I really recommend checking it out.

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Filed under: Academia, Authors, Books, Coding, Computer Science, Events, Programming, Technology

Robot & Frank

Author: Aasemoon

23 Mar

Few days ago I watched “Robot & Frank“. One of the better Robot movies I’ve seen. I guess I mostly liked the fact that this movie, unlike many sci-fi/futuristic movies I’ve seen, is not trying to decide or state whether this kind of technological advancement has positive implications or negative ones. Instead, it’s simply showing that it can have pretty serious effects on the most private aspects of our lives, and our relationships, with others and even with ourselves.

Oh, and I loved the soundtrack! =)

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Filed under: Entertainment, Motion Picture, Movies, Robotics, Sci-Fi, Technology

Robocup 2013 – Trailer

Author: Aasemoon

18 Mar

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Filed under: Electronics, Entertainment, Fun, Robotics, Technology

Google Reader Shutting Down… Grrrrrrr…..

Author: Aasemoon

15 Mar

Seriously Google, what in the bloody hell?

It’s not just that Google launches projects with half-baked concepts, gathers a small user group, and then discontinues the service hanging the users to dry. But it’s also that Google launches a good, useful, well developed service, throughout the years gathers a large number of users, and then out of the blue decides to shut the service down and make the lives of all these users complicated. =(

It wasn’t just that they recently discontinued Friend Connect that me and some of my friends were actually using. It wasn’t just that they disabled my G+ profile and therefore half of my Google services because they thought my name wasn’t “real”. Now they’re going to shut down Google reader, which is probably the single web service that I use more than any others [with exception of my stuff on my own domain]. I’m angry, I’m furious, I’m exasperated, and I’m not the only one.

I’ve exported my feeds, and I’ve found a couple of possible replacements. Feedly is the one I’ve switched to as of last night. The Chrome version looks good and the Android version looks great. And still, there’s so much they don’t do, compared to GReader.

Ask me again why I don’t like Google.

Meh.

</vexed rant>

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Filed under: Google, Horrible, Internet, Technology, Web

Quantified Self Meetup, Zeo, and my own odd sleeping habits!

Author: Aasemoon

14 Mar

Due to my collection of genetic peculiarities, I’ve undergone quite a number of tests and studies throughout my life. However last night during the “Quantified Self” meetup, I

realized I’ve never actually looked into my sleeping patterns and stages. Given my truly weird lifelong sleeping habits, I think it might be interesting to do so.
For as long as I remember, I’ve slept an average of 4 hours per cycle. As a child perhaps I would stay in bed longer, but the 4 hours were all the sleep I needed, and it’s still the same. I can force myself into sleeping more, that actually can at times work, but it will result in something like what people usually experience when they don’t get enough sleep. There have also been times when I’ve gone for a number of days with much less than that, or no sleep what-so-ever. And then I sleep for a much longer time, and all is well. The little sleep that I get is quite enough, and I’ve basically never had a problem with being tired, sleepy or out of energy during the day. None of this has ever had a negative effect on my health, mental sharpness and so on. The few hours that I sleep are usually deep, unbroken, and apparently quite fulfilling! [Some years ago there was a study about this, titled “The Sleepless Elite“. Didn’t offer much in terms of answers though…]
The other odd bit is the way I dream. I’ve heard in many occasions, including last night at the QS event, about people attempting to induce lucid dreams. There’s been quite a good deal of speculations about the positive or negative results of doing that. The thing about me, is that I don’t have anything other than fully lucid dreams! I dream quite a lot, I tend to remember my dreams clearly, and in my 29 years, I have never had a dream that wasn’t lucid. I’ve been trying to figure this one out, talking to psychologists, neurologists, and you name it…. so far I’ve not come any closer to knowing why.
So with all this, it was very interesting for me to look at the sleep charts created by “Zeo Sleep Manager“. The device detects and records your REM, Light and Deep sleeping stages [among other features…]. This is something I’ve never tried, and I do wonder, with my little “situation”, how my chart would look like. Perhaps I should give it a try.
More on the QS meetup, it was also interesting to see Last.fm presented as a self tracking tool. I just realized that I’ve been doing this for quite a few years now… I listen to humongous amounts of music on daily basis, and I can’t really tell you what kind of music “I like”. Depending on my mood and state of mind, I could be listening to just about anything. What I’m listening to is a reflection of my psychological patterns, and for many years now, my close friends and I have been looking at my Last.fm charts to get an idea of “how I’ve been doing”! So yes, haha, Last.fm is in fact the perfect self tracking/study tool! =)
And that’s about all I have to say for now….

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Filed under: Aasemoon, Events, Life, QS, Science, Technology

IoT Entrepreneur Journeys

Author: Aasemoon

13 Mar

Oh, huumm, I forgot to mention… the IoT meetup last week, titled “IoT Entrepreneur Journeys”, turned out to be pretty fantastic. I was originally not planning on going, so I have to thank the friend who convinced me to go. =) Great crowd, great discussions… much learned.

Out of the 5 companies who’s founders were present, [Evrythng, DecentLab, EnvEve, Koubachi, Yaler], I had actually never heard of Evrythng before. And I must say I found what they’re trying to do quite exciting. So, check out their website!

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Filed under: Events, Technology, Zürich

2nd Swiss OpenStack UG meeting

Author: Aasemoon

21 Feb

On Tuesday evening I attended the 2nd OpenStack user group meeting at the Switch building in Zürich. Out of the numerous presentations, the most interesting [well, the most relevant you could perhaps say…] to me were the “Heat” presentation, and the “CloudFoundry on OpenStack” one. If anyone here is interested in the topic[s] you can check out the presentation slides here. You can also view the video recordings of all the talks here.

Oh, yes, and there’s of course pictures. And below there’s a couple of pictures with me in them looking all sorts of dazed.

P.S.: YES, the pizza was great! [Thanks for the reminder! =P]