Richard’s Blogosphere

Introducing Slack-Twitter

Just a Gwai Lo - Wed, 03/25/2015 - 01:45

Do you like Slack? Do you like Twitter? Would you like to use Twitter in your Slack? Read more about Introducing Slack-Twitter

Published by Richard on March 24th, 2015

There’s More to the Remembering Than Just What You Paid Attention To

One Stack Deep - Mon, 02/09/2015 - 00:11

Scientific American reported in December 2011 of research on the doorway effect, which is forgetting what you were going to do as soon as you entered a different room in your abode. Gabriel A. Radvanskya, Sabine A. Krawietza & Andrea K. Tamplina published a paper showing in experiments that people recalled less walking through a doorway than walking the same distance without a doorway.

From the Scientific American report:

Is it walking through the doorway that causes the forgetting, or is it that remembering is easier in the room in which you originally took in the information? Psychologists have known for a while that memory works best when the context during testing matches the context during learning; this is an example of what is called the encoding specificity principle.

Except that walking back to the room in which you thought of what you wanted to do doesn’t improve the chances of remembering what you wanted to do.

The doorway effect suggests that there’s more to the remembering than just what you paid attention to, when it happened, and how hard you tried. Instead, some forms of memory seem to be optimized to keep information ready-to-hand until its shelf life expires, and then purge that information in favor of new stuff.

No real solutions to the problem are offered in the article. Write down a list of what you need to do in the next room? The Scientific American reporters offer a theory that other events trigger purging of short-term memory, and these events probably won’t give you enough time to jot down the thing you needed to do just now.


My 2014 in Books

Just a Gwai Lo - Thu, 01/15/2015 - 13:30

I only got to 17 books read in 2014, falling short of the 25 I set out to read. Read more about My 2014 in Books

Published by Richard on January 15th, 2015

Just a Gwai Lo Now Powered by Drupal 7

Just a Gwai Lo - Tue, 12/09/2014 - 16:30

This blog is now powered by Drupal 7. I’m redirecting some content that Drupal 7 wouldn’t handle to my archive site thanks to the Rabbit Hole module. (Assuming DNS has propagated to you, my SkyTrain Explorer journal should be a live and well, along with some link-blog posts and other whatnots.) This is also going to be a test of the Vinculum module's support of Webmention, since my site powered by Known supports it out of the box. Some related links can be found on the post in question. Read more about Just a Gwai Lo Now Powered by Drupal 7

Published by Richard on December 9th, 2014

2014 Eastside Culture Crawl

Just a Gwai Lo - Mon, 11/24/2014 - 03:42

My photos and memories of walking around East Vancouver taking in the yearly arts and crafts festival. Read more about 2014 Eastside Culture Crawl

Published by Richard on November 24th, 2014

Hot Talks at Hot Art Wet City: Eastside Culture Crawl Artists Speak

Just a Gwai Lo - Fri, 11/14/2014 - 01:40

Tonight, at Hot Art Wet City, a wee little studio on Main & 6th Ave., I heard from several artists talk about their work and how they do it. Read more about Hot Talks at Hot Art Wet City: Eastside Culture Crawl Artists Speak

Published by Richard on November 13th, 2014

We Can Explore an Endlessly Generated World Freely

Just a Gwai Lo - Tue, 10/21/2014 - 22:22

John Crowley: “To live at once in a time recoverable by a particular sacred calendar and also by a time without qualities, counted as it passes, involves a sort of mental doubling that is perhaps comparable, in the richness it grants to thought and feeling, to growing up bilingual: two systems, each complete, funny when they collide, each supplying something the other lacks, bearing no command to choose between them. Read more about We Can Explore an Endlessly Generated World Freely

Published by Richard on October 21st, 2014

Vancouver Design Week Bike Tour

Just a Gwai Lo - Fri, 09/26/2014 - 00:28

As part of Vancouver Design Week 2014, a senior urban designer from the City of Vancouver took us on a 3 hour bike tour of Vancouver's architecture. We started in Olympic Village, made our way north on the seawall to Chinatown, then rode through Gastown to the convention centre, after which we biked to Stanley Park and then to Third Beach, ending at Mole Hill. Read more about Vancouver Design Week Bike Tour

Published by Richard on September 25th, 2014

Alternatives to the Best Way to Discover a Strange City

Just a Gwai Lo - Wed, 08/06/2014 - 18:00
Published by Richard on August 6th, 2014

Two Weeks of Ingress

Just a Gwai Lo - Mon, 07/28/2014 - 17:47

While leaving a BBQ celebrating a friend's 50th birthday party, Richard Smith's tweet pointing out the Ingress app had been released for iOS flowed through my stream. For the last two years, owners of Android-based Internet communicators have been playing the GPS-enabled, location-based massively mouthful role-playing game. Read more about Two Weeks of Ingress

Published by Richard on July 28th, 2014

Monday Morning Meeting: Issue #6

Just a Gwai Lo - Mon, 06/16/2014 - 14:00

Links randomly selected from the stuff I saw the previous week. Social issues and technology; a procedurally generated video game makes a big splash at E3; a surprisingly insightful review of a web series; and an autobiographical critique of Modernism. Some links are from longer than a week ago.

Published by Richard on June 16th, 2014

Almost Successful Bluetooth Dongle

Richard's Raspberry Pi Adventures - Thu, 04/03/2014 - 00:00

USB Bluetooth v4.0 mini adapter

This came in for me last week, so I hope to be able to use create a Node.js-based iBeacon in my house using Bleacon and some instructions using Estimote. So far I’m unable to install Bleacon because, I believe, I insist on using the latest available binary for Node.js for Raspberry Pi.

At least the hardware works. It’s just the Node module failing to install. Getting software to work has always been easier than getting hardware to work, so I will persist.

Shared Folder

Richard's Raspberry Pi Adventures - Thu, 04/03/2014 - 00:00

Finder Shared sidebar with my Raspberry Pi 'ix' listed

Reading the chapter on sharing folders from other computers from Raspberry Pi Networking Cookbook this morning, I decided to do the opposite: share my Raspberry Pi over my local network with my Mac. Henrik Jachobsen has some easy-to-follow instructions, and there it is, my Raspberry Pi! (I named it Ix as an homage to Ford Prefect of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.) I followed the instructions exactly, except that I used Emacs, of course, and added Samba to the list of software I’ve installed on my Raspberry Pi. Did I mention that I have a list of software I’ve installed on my Raspberry Pi?

Almost Successful Bluetooth Dongle

Richard's Raspberry Pi Adventures - Thu, 04/03/2014 - 00:00

USB Bluetooth v4.0 mini adapter

This came in for me last week, so I hope to be able to use create a Node.js-based iBeacon in my house using Bleacon and some instructions using Estimote. So far I’m unable to install Bleacon because, I believe, I insist on using the latest available binary for Node.js for Raspberry Pi.

At least the hardware works. It’s just the Node module failing to install. Getting software to work has always been easier than getting hardware to work, so I will persist.

Shared Folder

Richard's Raspberry Pi Adventures - Thu, 04/03/2014 - 00:00

Finder Shared sidebar with my Raspberry Pi 'ix' listed

Reading the chapter on sharing folders from other computers from Raspberry Pi Networking Cookbook this morning, I decided to do the opposite: share my Raspberry Pi over my local network with my Mac. Henrik Jachobsen has some easy-to-follow instructions, and there it is, my Raspberry Pi! (I named it Ix as an homage to Ford Prefect of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.) I followed the instructions exactly, except that I used Emacs, of course, and added Samba to the list of software I’ve installed on my Raspberry Pi. Did I mention that I have a list of software I’ve installed on my Raspberry Pi?

Shared folder

Richard's Raspberry Pi Adventures - Thu, 04/03/2014 - 00:00

Finder Shared sidebar with my Raspberry Pi 'ix' listed

Reading the chapter on sharing folders from other computers from Raspberry Pi Networking Cookbook this morning, I decided to do the opposite: share my Raspberry Pi over my local network with my Mac. Henrik Jachobsen has some easy-to-follow instructions, and there it is, my Raspberry Pi! (I named it Ix as an homage to Ford Prefect of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.) I followed the instructions exactly, except that I used Emacs, of course, and added Samba to the list of software I’ve installed on my Raspberry Pi. Did I mention that I have a list of software I’ve installed on my Raspberry Pi?

Almost Successful Bluetooth Dongle

Richard's Raspberry Pi Adventures - Thu, 04/03/2014 - 00:00

USB Bluetooth v4.0 mini adapter

This came in for me last week, so I hope to be able to use create a Node.js-based iBeacon in my house using Bleacon and some instructions using Estimote. So far I’m unable to install Bleacon because, I believe, I insist on using the latest available binary for Node.js for Raspberry Pi.

At least the hardware works. It’s just the Node module failing to install. Getting software to work has always been easier than getting hardware to work, so I will persist.

Successful Wi-Fi Dongle Connection

Richard's Raspberry Pi Adventures - Thu, 03/13/2014 - 23:08
After a few days rest and looking again at the open tab on my iPad, I decided to give the WiFi dongle another go. A more sober reading of Nathan Wittstock’s instructions on getting WiFi on a headless Raspberry Pi led to moving some lines in /etc/network/interfaces around and commenting out some lines in /etc/wpa\_supplicant/wpa\_supplicant.conf. After a reboot, I connected to the internal IP address I associated with the WiFi dongle and voila! I’m connected. Taking out the Ethernet cable confirms it. That means being able to take the Raspberry Pi unit away from the bedroom (where the router lives) and into the office to hack away more efficiently on getting the Bluetooth dongle working.

Successful Wi-Fi Dongle Connection

Richard's Raspberry Pi Adventures - Thu, 03/13/2014 - 23:08
After a few days rest and looking again at the open tab on my iPad, I decided to give the WiFi dongle another go. A more sober reading of Nathan Wittstock’s instructions on getting WiFi on a headless Raspberry Pi led to moving some lines in /etc/network/interfaces around and commenting out some lines in /etc/wpa\_supplicant/wpa\_supplicant.conf. After a reboot, I connected to the internal IP address I associated with the WiFi dongle and voila! I’m connected. Taking out the Ethernet cable confirms it. That means being able to take the Raspberry Pi unit away from the bedroom (where the router lives) and into the office to hack away more efficiently on getting the Bluetooth dongle working.

Successful Wi-Fi Dongle Connection

Richard's Raspberry Pi Adventures - Thu, 03/13/2014 - 00:00
After a few days rest and looking again at the open tab on my iPad, I decided to give the WiFi dongle another go. A more sober reading of Nathan Wittstock’s instructions on getting WiFi on a headless Raspberry Pi led to moving some lines in /etc/network/interfaces around and commenting out some lines in /etc/wpa\_supplicant/wpa\_supplicant.conf. After a reboot, I connected to the internal IP address I associated with the WiFi dongle and voila! I’m connected. Taking out the Ethernet cable confirms it. That means being able to take the Raspberry Pi unit away from the bedroom (where the router lives) and into the office to hack away more efficiently on getting the Bluetooth dongle working.

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