Wolfram Alpha

Also today I listened to a Podcast from TED by Stephen Wolfram, creator of Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha. I heard about Alpha months ago on a TWiT podcast, but I never tried it out. Its actually pretty darn intuitive-check it out at http://www.wolframalpha.com/

Type in anything you want to know. I typed in "International space station" and it fetched all the data concerning exactly where it is over the earth right now, its velocity and speed, and other awesome info. Right now the space station is hovering over Germany.

The idea of Wolfram Alpha is that anyone will be able to use normal English language to design a program that will retrieve the information you want, even if you're not quite sure. It can solve complex mathematical equations for you, research anything, and present information in a logical, intuitive manner. This really is a new step not just in search engines, but in computing in general. It really is capable of data analysis in a way never before thought of.

You can watch the video podcast here:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/stephen_wolfram_computing_a_theory_of_everything.html

Pretty sweet!

Whoah...it also analyzes and composes music for you. You can create any music you want, analyse any music you want, and look at graphical representations of it. Apparently a lot of composers are already using it.

http://tones.wolfram.com/

Interesting to note, he's trying to use this code engine to try to solve the theory of everything. No one has any clue how he's going to do that, including himself, but he's confident that within a decade we should have some answers.

Seadragon and Augmented Reality Maps

Microsoft is starting to pick up the pace. In 2006 Microsoft acquired Seadragon Zooming Technologies, which allows for seamless zooming in and out of any image online. They've incorporated this into Bing maps with some other really cool features, such as interlacing live video and Microsoft and viewer submitted images. There are a lot of cool new things.

Check out Seadragon here, and try any image link online for yourself. Pretty cool stuff.

http://www.seadragon.com/

Just throw in the image link at the bottom or play with theirs (My images didn't tend to zoom in or be as incredible as theirs, but this is a very promising technology).

Watch a short demo of the coolest new features of Bing Maps by its lead designer here:

http://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera.html

Joseph Capek is hereby added to my list of favorite people.

So its the beginning of another semester. I'm taking fewer classes and only working on campus, as my internship has been completed. My classes are:

Database I (for my major)

Music Lit I (for my minor)

Women's Glee (for my minor)

English 201 (generals)

Science Foundations (generals)

So far, each of my classes seems surprisingly challenging and fun. At this point, I enjoy each of them and see myself continuing to do so.

I live in a two person apartment this semester. For about the first half hour by myself it was eerily quiet, until I realized how much homework I could accomplish in this type of environment. All unease and discomfort quickly left as I sat and studied for hours without stopping. YAY!!! I am so happy! I finally have the perfect setting for the focus I require. If I can keep this type of environment I will do well and graduate in December as I hope.

My roommate is intelligent, mature, and like-minded concerning studying habits and many other things. I love her to death. Last night (we were up until 2 so the conversation lacked intellect by that point) through a comedy of errors she ended up saying she was an androgenous goat. We then found out what exactly that meant, but at least she wasn't androgynous. These are two very different things. We have great times, but there is plenty of studying accomplished as well. The TV's only been on once, when I took a break from studying on Friday night to watch G.I. Joe.

Life is good. The Tongue-Tied Tribble Team revealed themselves after I had accused half the CIT department's students and made a very elaborate attempt to falsely accuse a good friend, who was of course innocent. It resulted in a very entertaining day, however, and the perpetrators got far more mileage out of the incident than they had planned. It turned out to be one of my favorite stories.

Well, I'm just trying to get more in the habit of updating this, as I have fallen behind in my journal writing. Wish me luck.

Oh, PS: Joseph Capek is the Russian who coined the word, "Robot." His brother used the idea in his play, which was the first public appearance of robots or the idea anyways in the 1920's. To learn about it yourself, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot