Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Tuesday at Work

I'm ramping up for a conference, huddling with Wanderers on some of my slides, also looking forward to music this weekend, the sponsored walk for charity etc. (I have my iPod, but'd rather converse).

Here's an ASCII version of those slides (part of being a pioneer in open source is developing in the clear like this):
[0] title and opening credits
[1] the geography in question (like a videogame, like Uru by Cyan of Spokane)
[2] blasting a new track (Max tunnel metaphors)
[3] light at the end of the tunnel (sweet jobs in the Silicon Forest)
[4] on the ground (math wars R us)
[5] marketing strategies (private industry mulls 'em over)
[6] quick trip through some math topics in Python (yawn)
[7] recap of core strategies, "takeover" of PPS (willing recruits model, merit paid elite crew)
[8] FOSS in Culture (generic themes relevant to the conference)
[9] closing credits, 4D Solutions logo

Some more notes about the day job:

We can't anticipate every medical measure future doctors will want to record, but still might have a "best of both worlds" scenario in which instruments "recognize their own handwriting" after finding a signature (some industry standard), at which point the visualization routines kick in and you get something pretty to look at in some proprietary device with open source components.

However, the information harvesting MapReduce engines won't have trouble with these somewhat open ended stowages, will paw through looking for SQL-ready material. I'm not suggesting a lot of work for an "AI shop" here though -- people need to consciously instruct their harvesters what to look for, that "steering sense" of relevance (the root meaning of cybernetics) being too expensive to code properly, even if doable.

"Humans have affordable rates, lets use them instead!" (my standard rant, whenever they want oodles of noodles for some AI "wrong tree" that won't work in ways Sir Roger might explain to ya).

What's gonna help with my talk is this switch from analog to digital television recently, in terms of what's publicly broadcast (not everyone is tied in to proprietary TV channeling ala dish and/or cable).

Uncle Sam's plan is somewhat similar to mine, regarding math learning: let's upgrade, at least in Portland, making the necessary allowances for those other slower cities (not every town is a FOSS capital, let's admit it (but nor is Portland the only one e.g. Vilnius, Gothenberg... even Chicago)).

OK, time to deposit those checks. Sad watching CubeSpace close yesterday, had to switch my meeting to Lucky Lab.

I'm stalled on the Pythonic data structure (ISEPP tapes) but not for long probably. There's a retreat coming up, with lots of preparations under way. Sorry to miss ya this time Nirel, and yes Don I know, Father's Day is this coming weekend, not last weekend (must be that lunar calendar we're using in our household (wink to Glenn)).