Wednesday, August 29, 2007

turning japanese, I think so

I think I'm turning japanese - visiting tokyo and kyoto for
sigcomm 2007 has been a wonderful experience. Starting with NTT labs, and hanging out in Shinjuku area of Tokyo, then moving to Kyoto to check out Ashai Dry (a bar as well as a beer), some amazing Eel dishes, a japanese beer garden with Geishas and an eclipse of the moon, and the temples at Nara (giant climb thru buddhas) and Kodaiji, with spooky Shakahuchi flute music and a fabulus garden. Doing Karaoke with mad PhD students from all around the world! really, generally, quite awesome - I know prefer Miso soup for breakfast and a bowl of Ramen last thing after dinner by the river!

In the OO session last night, I played (thanks to Kenjiro Cho, for loan of lovely silent clasical guitar) (and spoke) this tune and someone asked me to post the modified lyrics:

Apoligies to Ella Fitzgerald and Cole Porter:

AbM7 DbM7
Everytime
AbM7 DbM7 AbM7
we submit to sigcomm
Fm7 Bbm7 Eb7/9
I die a little
AbM7 Bbm7 BM7 Bbm7 (Eb7/9) AbM7 Ab7
Everytime we submit to sigcomm
DbM7 F#7
I wonder why a little
AbM7 Bb7 Eb7/11 Eb7
Why the gods above me
Ebm7 Ab7 DbM7
Who must be in the know
Dbm7 Cm7
Think so little of me
Bdim Bbm7 Eb7/9
but yet they allow your papers to go, in.

AbM7 DbM7
When it's near
AbM7 DbM7 AbM7
There’s such an air
Fm7 Bbm7 Eb7/9
Of spring about it
AbM7 Bbm7 BM7 Bbm7 (Eb7/9) AbM7 Ab7
I can hear a berkeley grad student somewhere
DbM7 F#7
Begin to sing about it
AbM7 Bb7 Eb7/11 Eb7
There’s no conference finer
Ebm7 Ab7
But how strange the change
DbM7 F#7
From scott shenker to paul francis
AbM7 Fm7 Bbm7 Eb7(b9) AbM7 DbM7
Everytime we go to sigcomm

( I transposed it up a semitone as Am is a whole lot easier than Abm :)

The T-Shirt was a reference to the brilliant "Blink" episode of Dr Who in the last series.
Mark Handley took some wonderful pictures of the
Kodai-Ji temple where the conference banquet event started later that evening! quite a few others
also took pix

Friday, August 24, 2007

ninja cats and quantum computing

i just heard the best explanation so far for how quantum computing will work - its like ninja cats in manga making clones of themselves - if you've seen the movie Next, with Nicholas Cage, you'll get the idea


awsomeless!

Thursday, August 23, 2007

vanishing cell phones: truly hands free (the walls have ears)

so why do we carry cell phones ? with iris recognition and fixed infrastructrue, the environment should be the phone - any device nearby that can pick up your voice, and has a speaker, should be enlisted as part of the phone net - we then just "speak into the air" and "listen to the voices"

it would look less loony than wearing those STUPID BLUETOOTH HEADSETs, and would be much cooler in terms of battery life:)

the walls have ears - even on a beach, this should work (suitable sub ocean woofers could modulate the remote speakers voice and generate the sound in the surf).

true ubicomp, like nature, will be made of 1 trillion weird hacks like this, just to get around the problems with recharging and pollution from nicads etc...

Thursday, August 16, 2007

two internet ideas and a story

patrick is 9 - here are his internet ideas today:
1/ Internet Shower - you read your email while having a show - a laser projects a keyboard onto the shower water as it falls and projects a display too and detects your typing....very japanese, very cool, very keanu reeves (without the full length blacsk leather coat)

2/ the internet in a bag - get the very big bag and hold it over the internet for 5 hours, then quickly put a big plate on top to stop the web pagesfrom falling out, and voila -you have the internet, pret a porter...

3/ a story: when I was born, my writing was like I was clinging to a cliff top with a finger nail. then a finger, then later one hand, then finally to hands, and I pulled myself up to the top of the cliff and lay tyhere panting to see my pareents walking away. In the distance was shakespeare - he never fell off the cliff in the first place

patrick mckeever crowcroft, 15.8.2007

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misery me, there is a floccipaucinihilipilification (*) of chronsynclastic infundibuli in these parts and I must therefore refer you to frank zappa instead, and go home