As part of the 300 program, Steorn recently released specific details about their technology, which was pretty much the whole point of the 300. The general reaction has been vaguely positive and appreciative (like this posting), though there is a huge self-selection bias in play.

Their key operating principle is clever and unlike anything I’ve seen in my armchair studies of supposed magnetic motion machines. But it’s complicated, in a way that is like the EM equivalent of the three-body problem. In other words, their description is neither obviously wrong nor right. Any time you have moving magnetic fields and pulsating electromagnet currents, hard-to-predict interactions tend to happen. There’s also a host of measurement difficulties, including properly accounting for power factors and complex number phasors for power input/output in inductive circuits.

There’s still a vast disconnect between the jury announcement and failed public demonstration and everything else still going on. It’s fascinating to watch. :-)

-m

All the input/output/port stuff in XProc seemed incomprehensible to me until I recognized something simple. Every time you see a <pipe> element, read it as “comes from”. For example

  <p:output port="result">
    <p:pipe step="validated" port="result"/>
  </p:output>
reads as ‘output to the “result” port comes from the port “result” on step “validated”‘ and
  <p:input port="source">
    <p:pipe step="included" port="result"/>
  </p:input>
reads as ‘input for the “source” port comes from the port “result” on step “included”‘. If you keep this in mind it all makes much more sense.
More collected Geek Thoughts at http://geekthoughts.info.
				

The rules of Nomic Chess start out like regular chess, except that when it is your turn, instead of making a move, you can change the rules such that any particular class of pieces (say pawns) can move like any other class of pieces (say queens).

An optional second rule is that when you are in check, you must make a move, not a rule change, in order to get out of check. (Otherwise it can be extremely difficult to arrive at a checkmate if any attacking piece can be turned into one that moves like a pawn or whatever).

More collected Geek Thoughts at http://geekthoughts.info.

From CMSMcQ at Balisage:

Context switches are expensive.

More collected Geek Thoughts at http://geekthoughts.info.

Here’s the scenario:

The night before a long flight, I upload my personal files into a freshly charged Kindle 2. To preserve the battery, I switch off wireless and in the bag it goes. The next day, on the plane, I open the Kindle…and it’s showing an entirely depleted battery, exclamation point and all. Can you spot the design flaw?

-m

I’m heading off to beautiful downtown Montréal this weekend for Balisage, my first appearance at this particular conference. If you’re heading there too, look me up. -m

According to this page, it’s here. At least the source code is. You heard it here first. -m

On this comic‘s panel 9 describes XHTML 1.1 conformance as:

the added unrealistic demand that documents must be served with an XML mime-type

I can understand this viewpoint. XHTML 1.1 is a massively misunderstood spec, particularly around the modularization angle. But because of IE, it’s pretty rare to see the XHTML media-type in use on the open web. Later, panel 23 or thereabouts:

If you want, you can even serve your documents as application/xhtml+xml, instantly transforming them from HTML 5 to XHTML 5.

Why the shift in tone? What makes serving the XML media type more realistic in the HTML 5 case? IE? Nope, still doesn’t work. I’ve observed this same shift in perspective from multiple people involved in the HTML5 work, and it baffles me. In XHTML 1.1 it’s a ridiculous demand showing how out of touch the authors were with reality. In HTML5 the exact same requirement is a brilliant solution, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

As it stands now, the (X)HTML5 situation demotes XHTML to the backwaters of the web. Which is pretty far from “Long Live XHTML…”, as the comic concludes. Remember when X stood for Extensible?

-m

I hate moving at high speed with multiple large chunks of metal in close formation.

I hate the sound of traffic. The smell.

I hate it when  people jump in a car to drive somewhere a block away.

I hate driving. I hate parking. I hate SUVs.

Also, getting a root canal leaves me in a foul mood.

More collected Geek Thoughts at http://geekthoughts.info.