As of last week, Microsoft Sho [the .NET Playground for Data] is publicly available for download. Check it out.

“Sho is an interactive environment for data analysis and scientific computing that lets you seamlessly connect scripts (in IronPython) with compiled code (in .NET) to enable fast and flexible prototyping. The environment includes powerful and efficient libraries for linear algebra as well as data visualization that can be used from any .NET language, as well as a feature-rich interactive shell for rapid development. Sho is available under the following license.”

I’ve been trying it out a bit, and skimming through the book. I think there’s a possibility that I just may like this thing better than R. There’s also a rather interesting Channel 9 video on the topic. Here it is:

Loreena McKennitt’s version of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Lady of Shalott” is my favourite so far. The story of Lady of Shalott has always been one of my favourite Arthurian myths, and I think Loreena McKennitt’s voice and style of music goes perfectly with the general feel of the story.

On either side of the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the Wold and meet the sky;
And thro’ the field the road run by
To many-towered Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The Island of Shalott.

Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Thro’ the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four grey walls, and four grey towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle embowers
The Lady of Shalott.

Only reapers, reaping early,
In among the bearded barley
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
Down to Tower’d Camelot;
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers “Tis the Fairy
The Lady of Shalott.”

There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.

She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.

And moving through a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot;
And sometimes thro’ the mirror blue
The Knights come riding two and two.
She hath no loyal knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.

But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror’s magic sights,
For often thro’ the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot;
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed.
“I am half sick of shadows,” said
The Lady of Shalott.

A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro’ the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneel’d
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shalott.

His broad clear brow in sunlight glow’d;
On burnish’d hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow’d
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flashed into the crystal mirror,
“Tirra lirra” by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.

She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces thro’ the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look’d down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack’d from side to side;
“The Curse is come upon me,” cried
The Lady of Shalott.

And down the river’s dim expanse
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance–
With a glassy countenance
did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.

Heard a carold, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darkened wholly,
Turn’d to tower’d Camelot.
For ere she reach’d upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.

Under tower and balcony,
By garden-wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and burger, lord and dame,
And round the prow they read her name,
The Lady of Shalott.

Who is this? And what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the knights at Camelot;
But Lancelot mused a little space
He said, “She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott….

When the dark wood fell before me
And all the paths were overgrown
When the priests of pride say there is no other way
I tilled the sorrows of stone

I did not believe because I could not see
Though you came to me in the night
When the dawn seemed forever lost
You showed me your love in the light of the stars

Cast your eyes on the ocean
Cast your soul to the sea
When the dark night seems endless
Please remember me

Then the mountain rose before me
By the deep well of desire
From the fountain of forgiveness
Beyond the ice and the fire

Cast your eyes on the ocean
Cast your soul to the sea
When the dark night seems endless
Please remember me

Though we share this humble path, alone
How fragile is the heart
Oh give these clay feet wings to fly
To touch the face of the stars

Breathe life into this feeble heart
Lift this mortal veil of fear
Take these crumbled hopes, etched with tears
We’ll rise above these earthly cares

Cast your eyes on the ocean
Cast your soul to the sea
When the dark night seems endless
Please remember me…
Please remember me…
Please remember me…

Holy cows! A friend just shared this video on my wall on Facebook. I realize it’s just concept and a lot of things happen in “just concept” these days, but this is sooo bleeding impressive!

Morph is a new concept design by Nokia, that supposedly will revolutionize mobile devices using a whole load of nano-tech. Read more about it here.

I’ve been listening to this a lot in the past few weeks and totally love it. 5 awesome ambient tracks, by the French musician Moonove. Check it out!

Dydd Santes Dwynwen Hapus! =) To all my Welsh friends and anyone else who likes celebrating it. <3

P.S.: Yes I personally celebrate the St Dwynwen’s day instead of the Valentine’s day. But I don’t mind celebrating the V-Day with friends either. =P

Tonight I watched the very last episode of the TV series Medium, without actually knowing that the series has been cancelled and this actually is the series finale. And after finally finding it out… well, I’m not too happy.

Medium was one of my favourite sci-fi series for a long while, and I always felt that felt that it was such a shame, that the series never received the attention and credit it deserved. Perhaps the main reason is that Medium was not out of the box enough for serious sci-fi fans, and not soap-opera enough for the mainstream, resulting in the series being completely underrated.

So the show finally got cancelled which in my opinion was too early and yet not completely unexpected. But after 7 seasons, I must say I was expecting quite a bit more for a finale. I mean I actually liked the plot for the finale quite a lot, and I enjoyed watching it. But I was constantly expecting Allison to wake up from the first layer of the dream, realizing that Joe hadn’t actually gone to the trip yet. And I most certainly did not want this as finale. The series ending with the death of a main character, and with bunch of flash forwards? And they didn’t even make it a 2 hour episode!!

So yes, altogether I’m rather disappointed. Regardless of what genre the series could or could not be categorized under, I always enjoyed it and I think there was still quite a bit more to tell. So I guess now I can only hope that someone with pick up the story line and continue it as comic books, the way Joss Whedon did with Angel comics for instance. I get the feeling Medium could actually make quite an interesting set of comic books…. hmmmmmm…. I guess we’ll see……

Due to the recent collection of hurricanes in my life, both the happy and the sad ones, I hadn’t even found the chance to sit down and listen to the new albums from some of my favourite musicians with any form of an actual focus. Well, today I finally did! Starting with the new album by Aleksi Eeben, called “Various Secret Continents“.

I had listened to single tracks from this album as they were being released, and was very much looking forwards to listening to the outcome as a whole. And the whole is indeed pretty awesome! I like every “Salamander” in there 😉 , but if I were to choose a favourite, it would definitely be the “Sun Salamander”. That track is just… beautiful, I love the melody! I also very much like the “Continental Salamander”, and the bonus track “The Grand Rules” is also very interesting. But again, if you’re checking out the album, which you most certainly should, make sure to listen to all the Salamanders from beginning to the end, in order to experience the full effect. =)

Also, do not forget to read the story of Salamanders here. It’s extremely neat! =) You can download the album from the same page as well. I only wish that the album was available as a CD too! Would have loved to have the story in a CD booklet. =)

And by the way, hope you all had a great 1/11/11. =)

I’ve been using the new Firefox 4.0 Beta for about a week now and I LUV IT, certainly enough to make a mention here! =P New features are awesome… tabs appearing in Win7 taskbar as if they were separate windows is great, the new way add-ons and extensions are handled and organized is fantastic, new look is quite pretty and a whole load of other new features are great as well. I also like the few new extensions that I’ve seen so far, that work with the new abilities of FF. The retractable add-ons bar for instance is quite handy.

I’ve always been a huge fan of FF’s customizability, and now there’s even more of that to be happy about. I also like many of the technical upgrade and oh, don’t forget the WebGL support. Aaaand the private browsing feature is pretty interesting too. You can check out the full features list here.

The only issue right now is that once you switch to the beta, 90% of your current add-ons will stop working because their version is not compatible with the new Firefix. The thing is, many of these add-ons can technically handle the FF beta, and only get disabled due to the version check. So you have 2 options:

1. Disable the add-on compatibility check. To do that, go to “about:config” on FF, create a new boolean variable, call it “extensions.checkCompatibility.4.0b” and set it’s value to false. This works, but I DO NOT recommend it. Because this will suddenly enable all your old add-ons, some of which are sure to not work properly on the new FF. As a result all sorts of bugs and malfunctions will start showing up on your new FF. So… kind of a bad idea.
   
2. Tweak specific add-ons to work with the new FF. This way, as soon as one of these add-ons starts giving your new FF hick-ups, your going to know it and get rid of the add-on. To do that, you’ll have to download the add-on first which you can do by right clicking on the download/install link of the add-on, even though you’ll see a “not compatible” sign on it. Then rename file extension from “.xpi” to “.zip”, and extract the “install.rdf” file out of the package. Open up the rdf file and find “em:maxVersion” in it, and change it’s value from whatever it is to ” 4.*”. Return the new version of the file to the package, change the extension back to “.xpi” and drop it into FF so that it’ll get installed.

I hope that helps someone. The 2nd one is what I’ve done to most of my extensions, and everything works like a charm so far. Really looking forwards to the final release now!