Ideas have been brought to light. Actions have been taken. Words have been said. Covers have been blown. I can’t help the feeling that many people are now beyond the point of no return. If a change doesn’t come now…. well, I don’t even want to imagine the kind of Iran we’ll see after this. It would be a true nightmare.

The threatening speech from the supreme leader today indeed sounded like an ultimatum. I fear the shape of things to come, but I prefer not to think about the fear. I have hope……I still have hope.

I take a great deal of comfort in the fact that we’re not alone……

The Pirate Bay really does rule! =) Check out the current logo!

Now this, is pretty kool!

“We have put together a video of our Milestone 2 run, which we completed this past Monday, June 1, 2009. This particular run had our PR2 alpha robot navigate through eight doors, and plug its power cord into nine outlets. In this video, you can see the various challenges our robot faced, such as a crowded office environment and the abrupt appearance of a human obstacle. We nearly sabotaged the run early on. Folks around the office were eager to track the progress of the robot, so many people ran their own monitoring programs on the PR2. This caused an increase in CPU load, starving the navigation software. Nonetheless, the robot was able to continue with the run, albeit more slowly and cautiously.”

More information @ the Willow Garage website.

“We are currently developing algorithms that will narrow the learning gap between humans and machines, and enable flight systems to ‘learn’ the way humans do: through practice.

Rather than being programmed with detailed instructions, these flight systems will learn from experience. Like baby birds leaving the nest, they will be clumsy at first. Over time, however, they will become capable of sophisticated, coordinated maneuvers……”

More information about this @ the Flying Machine Arena website.

Is this soundtrack amazing or what? Fascinating soundtrack on a fascinating movie. Jerry Goldsmith rules forever. [Check out my Jerry & Joel Goldsmith twine! =) ]

A few days ago I finished reading “The Moon and Sixpence” by William Somerset Maugham, for what I believe to be the sixth time. I’ve read this book in different seasons of my life, and it feels like every time I read it, I get something new out of it to busy my mind with. The book is semi-fictional novel about the life of a genius painter called Charles Strickland, who doesn’t mind making sacrifices of any magnitude at his own or other people’s cost, in the pursuit of his special vision of beauty and art. Charles Strickland’s character is fictional, but it is based on the real world painter Paul Gaugin, who happens to be one of my favorites.

I’ve always had this habit that when I’m reading a book, I create something of a movie scene in my head and bring the characters of the book I’m reading to life. I see them in their movements and their conversations, and sometimes, if a book fascinates me enough, I may end up imagining myself facing these characters, wondering what I would say or do if I where placed in the circumstances of the story. I guess that gives me a better understanding of these characters, and what they face in the course of the book. I think that perhaps while reading The Moon and Sixpence this time around, I felt more sympathy towards the narrator and the grave challenge he is facing in his rather peculiar relationship with Strickland, and the difficulty and confusion he has to deal with, when trying to describe how he perceives Strickland, his actions and his work of art, specially since he can’t even quite decide what it is that he feels towards Strickland. Well, perhaps my sympathy is due to the fact that I’ve found myself in his shoes in occasions.

The first time I read this book it was in my very early teenages. I remember being deeply taken by it, as Maugham’s way of describing those complex details of the mind of a human being, is simply fascinating. I also remember another element quite well: the acute horror I felt when I brought to life Strickland in my mind and imagined myself facing him. And from what I’ve gathered from discussing this book with it’s other fans, I’m not the only one feeling this way.

Well, Strickland is not exactly a sociopath. He’s not a serial killer, and as a matter of fact if one were to face Strickland in the real world, there would really be no immediate danger to worry about. Then what is it about him that induces such horror? Well, I suppose it’s mostly about what he does not, rather than what he does. The void, the gap, the emptiness. The narrator goes all the way to Paris with the intention to appeal to Strickland’s sense of human compassion, morality or responsibility, only to find out that he had none. In his consuming and obsessive quest to bring to canvas his unique vision of beauty and art. he had left his humanity behind.

So there’s the narrator, horrified, shocked and repelled by Strickland’s lack of human values on one hand, and absorbed and mystified by his courage and genius on the other. He can’t stand the way Strickland doesn’t mind destroying the lives of people who for some reason or the other care about him, with his complete disregard. And he can’t hate him enough to dismiss his invitation for a drink. He admires and loathes Strickland at the same time. He may have a lot of reasons to detest the very sight of Strickland, but when Strickland is deadly sick, he helps Stroeve in taking care of him, knowing full well that Strickland would never do the same for him. In fact he knows quite well that he could have a drink with Strickland every day of the year, and yet Strickland wouldn’t give a two penny if he receives news of his death.

And then there’s Dirk Stroeve, who’s not exactly an observer. He’s the true friend, one cursed by his own good will and positive nature. He receives Strickland’s colourful insults with a kind of patience that only he would be capable of. He takes Stroeve to his own home and looks after him when he’s sick, only so that Strickland would call him a sentimental fool, and then annihilate everything that mattered to him and leave him with absolutely nothing. Strickland despises Stroeve, only because Stroeve tries to help him despite of his loathsome behavior. Strickland sees any gesture of kindness from anyone as a some form of a “trick”, as he puts it, to put a leash on him, or to control or manipulate him in some way. And that, is the horror. It’s the narrator’s pointless struggles to bring the smallest sign of sympathy out of Strickland, and finding out that there is none. It’s trying to explain the effect of a colour complex to someone who is born colourblind. It’s the bringing down of human compassion to the level of a control mechanism, or sentimental foolishness.

I have to mention that as far as I know, the events of Paul Gaugin’s life are similar to Strickland’s, but not his behavioral characteristics. I guess that’s a relief, I somehow feel that I couldn’t enjoy looking at his paintings if he really were like Charles Strickland. 

A few hours ago xo directed me to this forum thread on Channel 9. Honestly, at the first glance this seemed to me like some sort of an elaborate joke, but as it turned out, it very much isn’t! As you can read here, apparently yesterday at D7 Steve Balmer announced the new MS search engine called…. well yes, it’s actually called “Bing” =)) And here is the new Bing webpage, not a joke! Now of course there’s no talk of other Live services being rebranded as of yet, but I can see how the starter of that C9 thread could have came to this conclusion. If one of the very main features of “Live” is going to be rebranded, what are the chances that the rest of them will be too? Specially since they’ve already announce “Bing Maps” too, which is the new name for MS’s Virtual Earth. 

And now try to imagine the verbal disaster that this would entail. For instance, if WLM is going to be called Bing Messenger, would you really feel like telling someone to “Bing” you? =)) And even if it is just the search engine…. “let me Bing that for you”!! =D Can somebody tell me, how in the universe MS managed to come up with a name as ridiculous as this?? It almost looks like a very desperate attempt at being hip! Plus, I read on another C9 thread that Bing actually means “disease” in Chinese Mandarine!! Way to choose a proper name Microsoft!

Well at least now the ludicrous name matches the ludicrous policies. =P

I can’t begin to put in words how much I love this song….. the theme music for Inspector Morse series, by the ingenious Barrington Pheloung.

My current mood: 

Ok so in the category of terrifyingly silly technical glitches that annoy the universe out of you, can anyone tell me how to stop a single contact from constantly disappearing off of my WLM contacts list? Yes, I literally do mean “disappearing”. =P When I first added this contact on WLM something didn’t work and the contact didn’t appear on my list, so I had to go and try adding him on my WL homepage. That worked, but then after a few hours a second instance of the same ID appeared on my connections list, that was looking permanently offline. So then I made the mistake of removing the repeated ID, which resulted in the working instance getting removed as well. Then I re-added the contact and things were working fine until a few days ago when the current royal mess-up started. Now every time I log out and log back in, that specific contact is no longer on my list. [And this is on my mobile account.]

On the other hand, as I mentioned before, I don’t see the correct online / offline status for my contacts on either one of my accounts. And to top that, some of the contacts that I only have on the messenger and not my profile page, also keep disappearing and reappearing. [Is it now the case that you absolutely have to have a contact on both messenger and the profile page?!] Except I didn’t know that they were going to reappear, so I re-added them, and now I have 2 instances of these contacts, and I guess you can imagine what will happen if I try removing the extra copy. Yeah, the exact same mess. =P

Ridiculous, isn’t it? From what I read on the web I’m not the only one with these issues at the moment. And I have no clue when the darn thing is going to start properly working again. What’s even more confusing is that both my accounts are experiencing the exact same problems with the exact same contacts. I wonder if that’s because the 2 accounts are linked?! A few of my friends [including an MSie, ironically! ;)] suggest that I should create some sort of a back up account, brand new and with no links to the other accounts, and add my connections in there, just in case things get worse!! Well I wonder, just how many WL accounts does 1 person need, and how many instances of me do my friends need to have on their connection lists? =))) But if things keep looking scary, I may as well do that.

Of course my smarty pants friend xo tells me something like “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s this thing called Google Talk…”. =))) Well d’ah, I know there are other messengers out there, but how am I ever going to get everyone on my rather lengthy connections list to switch to another messenger, just so that the other one will also at some point mal-function? =P Specially since neither me nor anyone else want to switch to GTalk or Skype or any other messenger from WLM, due to the fact that the other services simply don’t have the WLM functionalities [on a good day when WLM actually functions. ]

Honestly, Microsoft’s decision to make Live services unavailable to a number of countries including Iran, makes the thought of abandoning WLM all the more appealing right now. Well, perhaps gradually I will…..

I recently found out that my Ixian page has regular visitors, apparently that’s how some of my friends find out what I’m up to! Or if I’m really busy, that’s how they find out that I’m still alive… basically by checking out my news collection. =)) So that gave me the idea to create a bit of an extension to it. I created a new blog called “Secher Nbwi”. This new blog is in fact an auto-blog. The way it works, is that my activities around the web get automatically posted in there, via the feeds. Blog posts, twine posts, blip.fm posts… and everything else. So well, if you would like to web-stalk me, this is the easiest way to go! =D

I also added a couple of new toys to the Ixian page recently, and did some general updating on the website, including getting rid of the non-working last.fm widgets and adding my own brand new music player widget.

P.S.: If you’d like to know exactly what “Secher Nbiw” is all about, I suggest you read Frank Herber’s “Dune” series.