Archive of 2007 All All

Enabling iScrobbling of internet tracks

Submitted by nknouf on 10 December 2007 - 12:51am

If you’re like me, and use iScrobbler for last.fm, you might have noticed that the program doesn’t scrobble tracks that you listen to from the internet over m3u files. There is, however, a simple fix for this.

Fluid Networking for Activists

Submitted by nknouf on 7 December 2007 - 8:17am

A bit of a teaser about a current project of mine…

I’m working on a mobile phone application that allows activists to surreptitiously pass messages amongst Bluetooth-enabled phones. It came out of concerns I had watching events in Lebanon last summer, and Burma and Pakistan this fall, where the networking infrastructure was destroyed or shut down, eliminating regular communication channels.

Briefly returning, Way-Post-Thesis Edition

Submitted by nknouf on 28 November 2007 - 3:16am

I actually do plan on posting more on this blog in the coming weeks, but for the moment I just wanted to post a short update. I’m now at Cornell in the Information Sciences PhD program. I finished my master’s thesis at the MIT Media Lab in August just a couple days before I had to start at Cornell.

Early video of syngvab

Submitted by nknouf on 28 June 2007 - 8:53pm

I’m in the throes of finishing my thesis with the proverbial too-much-too-do. I’ve got code to finishing writing, PCBs to finish laying out, parts to order, things to cut. Oh, and also the actual thesis to write.

But I’ve made a quick video of some of the early tests with the latest version of the thesis object, syngvab.

Keeping me sane...

Submitted by nknouf on 10 June 2007 - 6:08am

...during my thesis is the innanity of lolcats:

from i can has cheezburger?

Also incredibly amusing: lolcode

Stupid, perhaps. But oh so funny.

Variations 10b mention

Submitted by nknouf on 15 May 2007 - 9:22pm

Thanks to Cati for mentioning my project, Variations 10b, in a posting of hers about a video of a John Cage performance!

On Fire appearing with Caspian and Constants

Submitted by nknouf on 23 February 2007 - 9:48pm

On Fire, the band I joined last summer, is performing in April at the Paradise with Caspian and Constants. More info to come soon.

Compiling QCad on OS X with fink

Submitted by nknouf on 14 February 2007 - 12:16am

UPDATE 2008.01.16: For some reason the original patch file I uploaded was wrong. I’ve corrected it and the correct file should be referenced now. Apply with “patch – p0 < qcad-2.0.5.0-1-fink-qt3mac.patch”.

NOTE: I can’t seem to build this on an Intel Mac due to problems with gcc-3.3 (see these posts about why you can’t build projects using gcc-3.3 on Intel Macs).

The Curse of Wanting the Novel

Submitted by nknouf on 2 February 2007 - 8:19am

There’re days when you latch on to one performer, one type of music, and you don’t know why. It consumes what you think about; you dance to silence, the sounds you hear only for yourself, the people looking in from the windows thinking you’re listening to something coming from the speakers in the living room: but no, what you hear is so powerful it lives in your mind alone.

Two Difficult Books Read Last Year

Submitted by nknouf on 22 January 2007 - 12:43am

Most people write their 2006 wrap-up shortly after 2006 has ended, where “shortly” refers to a span of a couple days, a week at most.

But I seem to have a different definition of the word “shortly”.

Last year was a timespan for reading much that I hadn’t read before, exposing my brain to academic ideas that tickled it into different directions, said directions leading to applications for science, technology, and society PhD programs. Yet at the same time I was reading more and more experimental fiction, seeing on the page new ways to define old words.