Archive for March, 2008

I have been a Battlestar Galactica fan since the beginning, much to my wife’s shagrin.  I even own all of the DVDs through season 2.5.  I bought them while in Iraq and was looking forward to catching up with season 3 before I came home.  Alas those DVDs have just been released in the US, a week before the final season! I caught a couple of “behind the scenes” shows for BSG last night and now I am chomping at the bit to catch up on season 3.  I missed the entire season while deployed and there are a lot of important plot points I need to catch up to follow the storyline. It wasn’t until last night that I even found out about the “5 Cylons” that have been hidden and the “final cylon” to be revealed! The best show on TV and I am going to have to try to play catch up after I can afford to get the season 3 DVDs off Amazon!

Ugh, such a geeky thing to be writing about!

Since my return from Iraq, my posting has sort of tanked into the black hole of nothingness.  It seems my readership has as well.  Things just aren’t as interesting in the good ol’ US of A as they are on the “front lines.”

I would love for my blog to become one of those milblogs that has a large daily readership and active discussions and forums.  The site is ready to go for that never-coming day.  I would love to discuss the interesting points in my life; military, EMS, or otherwise, and have a general readership that interacts.  It would be nice if I had “guest posters” and the perspectives of others on this site as well, although this place is more of a real-time memoir for me.  Heck, I would just like to have a readership large enough to cover the costs of my web hosting (which my ability to pay for this time is questionable).

Why can’t I write like this? I found this reposted on The Sandbox from an article originally posted on Acute Politics. We are a whole new generation of vets.

The Idaho Statesman began a five-part series yesterday on the “Five Years of War”. It opened with a fairly well-balanced article on ordinary life in Baghdad and a leading question: “When you close your eyes and think of Iraq, what does your mind’s eye see?”

I received the following comment the other day, “So, do you miss it? I’ve heard from others who really do miss being where they were. I’m not sure if it’s because life was just intense or maybe they felt their actions counted for something.  Just wondering….”

A computer that could pass the elusive “Turing Test!?”  Skynet and the T-1000 can’t be too far away! 

“Passing the Turing test is the holy grail of artificial intelligence (AI) and now researchers claim it may be possible using the world’s fastest supercomputer (IBM’s Blue Gene). This version of the Turing test pits a human conversing with a synthetic character powered by Rascals software crafted at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. RPI is aiming to pass AI’s final exam this fall, by pairing the most powerful university-based supercomputing system in the world with its new multimedia group which is designing a holodeck, a la Star Trek.”
via Slashdot

Not to mention, an AI Four Year old:

Four-year-old Eddie might behave like a typical young boy. Outside of the Second Life virtual world, however, he is anything but.

The child is a product of logic-based artificial intelligence and complex modelling techniques, and operates on what has been said to be the most powerful university-based supercomputing system in the world.

A creation of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Eddie has his own set of beliefs, and the ability to reason about his beliefs to draw conclusions in a manner that matches human children his age.
via iTNews.com

In a bit of real news from the front lines, a female medic received the Silver Star for her actions during an ambush.  She is only the second female to receive the Silver Star since WWII.  Congratulations Spc. Monica Lin Brown, you are an example of the type of people serving in our armed forces and a role model for others to follow.

Just in case anyone out there using a flavor of Linux was wondering, Amazon.com has a version of their MP3 Downloader available for several flavors of Linux.  You need this little app to download whole albums from Amazon.  I like the Amazon MP3 store better than iTunes, etc because all their music is DRM Free!  That means you can actually use and transfer your music as you see fit between players, music devices, etc unlike iTunes or the Zune store.

So far I have had zero issues with Amazon MP3 downloads and they are usually a few cents cheaper per song than their competitors, not to mention Last.fm (my favorite online music house) ties into Amazon directly.  That makes life so much easier since I tend to find new sounds by complete accident while persuing the depths of last.fm, the wikipedia, etc.

Anyway, I though some Linux user might be interested in the MP3 Downloader for Linux.  Now I don’t have to load an entire Virtual Machine with XP just to get a new album.

XKCD is one of my favorite online comics.  In fact, its pretty much the only comic I look forward to reading – online or otherwise.  Sometimes, the comics strike a chord, sometimes I just go, “huh!?” There are always hidden messages in the tooltip too!  Anyway, this is the latest strip for your entertainment.