According to Urban Dictionary: Theoretically, yes.

I always thought it would be cool if you could experience a day in someone else's mind, thereby experiencing all of their thoughts and mental processes.  At the moment, one of the ways in which we can catch a glimmer of the mysterious perspective of others is through auto-suggest based on millions of data from human input (in search engines).  Unfortunately (or fortunately), these can sometimes be just as strange as you can imagine (or couldn't imagine).

For example, take these auto-suggest results from Mashable:



Do these sample results reflect a glimpse into the mind of a crazed search-obsessed few and the many others who simply select hilarious auto-results out of curiosity, or is this an accurate glimpse into the typical queries of the average 21st century Google-user?

I actually came across this one myself today:

(By the way, the reviews for this 1995 book on Amazon are great.)

I haven't done a thorough analysis, but my first impression is that this data is probably useful in some way.  Search engines receive a huge amount of unique traffic each day, which means they have a huge sample base and virtually non existent sampling bias in that respect.  I also think it's fairly safe to assume that the active, relevant part of current Western and European societies use the Internet fairly regularly, so demographically there is a good range, if you're looking at mindsets in Western cultures (obviously these results may not apply to other cultures). 

However, I think there is still a huge range in how people actually use the Internet.  I think some people try to use the Internet as a second brain (e.g. can jesus help me?), while others use it a global encyclopedia (e.g. when will i get my tax refund?), and still others as a method to vent their thoughts into an impossibly large and tangled void, in hopes that their philosophical musings will be become clear (e.g. when will the world end?).  Let's not exclude those who it to obtain news, follow popular culture, and exploit the widespread availability of free data and media.

Perhaps you can determine that certain types of people typically use the Internet for certain things.  For example, maybe teenagers typically use the Internet to acquire media (hypothetically, of course), while middle-aged people use it as an encyclopedia, and thirty-somethings like to contribute mindless chatter.   Once you've then broken search results into these categories, you could begin to apply results to each category and determine in general what that demographic 'thinks about', relative to the depth of thought that they inputted in the first place.  For example, searches regarding the meaning of life (assuming they're not for Monty Python) might be considered 'deeper' inputs than searching for the correct pressure level in a tire.  From there, you could identify the particular thoughts that seem to occur and link them to each demographic.  Alternatively, you could identify the relationship that that demographic has with the Internet, and you could draw something about how that relationship evolved and how it affects that demographic.

In any case, I think it would make for an interesting and probably hilarious study, so I hope that some psychology grads take it upon themselves to check this out in more detail (if they haven't already).  Meanwhile, I typically keep my Internet interaction pretty shallow and limited basically to encyclopedic use and collaboration...which means Yahoo Answers is purely for enjoyment.

In collaboration with COSMOS magazine in Australia, in honour of National Science Week, the Australian government recently launched Hello From Earth.  The site is dedicated to collecting messages that will be transmitted to Gliese 581d; the "nearest, Earth-like planet outside our solar system".  You can read and submit cute 140 char comments that will be sent to Gliese 581d at the end of Science Week by NASA's Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex.



[image from hellofromearth]

Aviary is a really cool web app for creating art.  It includes applications for photo editing, image creation, vector editing, image markup, and palette creation, amongst other tools.  Although the apps require a Flash plug-in, the entire suite is free, making Aviary an attractive substitute for the Adobe Creative Suite, especially for casual artists who don't need the extensive features or price tag of proprietary software.

I tried out Toucan, which is a simple app designed for palette creation.  Toucan's intuitive, minimalistic interface allows the user to design a colour palette using up to 20 colours.  The colours can be individually selected from a colour wheel, or various relationships can be chosen to select complementary and opposite combinations.  Alternatively, you can import a picture and select colours from that picture to create a palette.  Toucan's interface reflects design intent by allowing the user to increase the pixel size of images in order to make colour selection easier.  Toucan also delivers the ability to view the palette through filters mimicking various visual impairments.

I made palettes for the two images shown below. Overall, I was really pleased with Toucan and I'm excited to try the other apps available from Aviary.  Keep up the great work!


Palette 1: Tulips at Dusk
Jason took this photo at the University of Waterloo campus in the spring.


Palette 2: Glacier Point
I took this photo at the peak of Glacier Pt. during the fall in Yosemite, California.

I first saw this video some time ago, but it is even more hilarious to watch now.  I have never heard someone enunciate "Microsoft" so perfectly. "You must be insane!..."

It is probably a safe estimate to say that at least 90% of the content on YouTube is a completely pointless waste of time.  However, sometimes, when watching one related video after another and slowly drifting towards a completely unrelated topic than you began with, you strike upon a little nugget of gold.  I think this video is so appealing because it's such a wonderfully strange mixture of classical and modern sounds.  The result is comparable to pure awesomeness.  Greg Pattillo also has several other songs publically available, including Super Mario Brothers, Peter and the Wolf, and the Sesame Street.  I don't think that Inspector Gadget ever sounded so good. Enjoy:

To escape the stresses of exams, I usually resort to some sort of multiplayer top down strategy game  (*cough*cough*AOE II*cough).  However, after getting prematurely excited about Starcraft II, I decided to try something that I had never tried before: the world of open source gaming.  Open sourcing products always gives them a special buzz, and after playing Battle for Wesnoth for a few months, I still haven't been disappointed.

Game Type: Tactical strategy game
View: Top down
Play Style: Turn based
Theme: Fantasy

I made the mistake of jumping into multiplayer mode (for which there is a well populated online community) on my first try, and it was difficult to get a sense of the game, or how to play.  However, the introductory campaigns are an excellent learning resource, and even one campaign gives a good sense of the game flow.  Many of the default campaigns help in refining your strategy, and there are a TON of custom campaigns made by a multitude of players (which are all freely available, of course).  If you're a fan of civilization or fantasy games, like Age of Empires, Empire Earth, or even Nethack, and you're willing to give turn-based a try, I recommend checking out Battle for Wesnoth.  The interface is simple to use, and the complexity of game reflects your strategy level.  Playing turn based games also makes it easy to stop at any time, or take a 3hr dinner break halfway through a game (although you may make some enemies if you do that during multiplayers).
[image from Wesnoth]

Here are some absolute gems from fail blog - a site that specializes in providing hilarious captions to life's little failures.  There are too many classics to show here but the site is something worth checking.

 

Now that warm spring weather is rolling in, everyone's throwing in their coats and eagerly pulling out their summer wardrobe.  It only feels natural to spruce things up on your computer as well, so I was happy to hear that Personas is out - the latest way to skin your fantastical Firefox browser.  It's free, and potentially shiny (depending on your preference), so there's nothing to lose!


My personal favourite at the moment is 'Paint Splat', as shown above.

Be prepared if you pull out a chair at the back of the Second Cup in the University of Waterloo plaza.  While the cosy atmosphere and drinks make it an overall pleasurable experience, the bass from the speakers sounds like someone getting punched in the stomach over and over again.  Maybe that's the level of distortion possible when you play pop music from something that looks like it belongs in a high school blaring the daily announcements.  Ace of Base will never sound the same.

If you've been complaining for years that video game music should be played in concert, or even if you've just gamed casually in the past, Video Games Live is the show for you.  I think anyone can enjoy the music, but you'll really have an appreciation for it when you've spent years of your childhood (or adulthood) glued to a console.

On top of all the crazy show antics (including a live band performance from the band that wrote the new Need for Speed soundtrack), the music was fantastic (cheers to the KW Symphony and Grand Philharmonic Choir) and hit all the major games.  Think classic Mario, Legend of Zelda, with some newer additions to the show based on popular request, including Metroid and the best game for music tracks ever - Chrono trigger! There was even a live Skype chat to the creator of the music for Starcraft II.

[ I know what I learned, and I think it's safe to say I'll probably only be using 1/3 of it at most after I graduate, unless I pursue a post-grad degree. ]

Most of us have been there at one point.  We've let our foreheads drop down on the desk amongst piles of paper and strewn notes, wondering, is this really right? Is this what I'm supposed to be doing?

I think some would even go so far as to argue whether their entire 4 or 5 year degree was really worth its buck.  Let's take my manufacturing course, for example.  We are presented with the current industrial methods of 'heat, beat and treat', and we get to perform all sorts of fun calculations on yield strength, fracture toughness, flow stress, elongation, temperature, force... I could go on.  Are the principles there? Sure, it's great to be able to perform all of those text book calculations for producing materials.  But we're just being taught to continue in the ways of the old industrial revolution mindset that brought us the ecological and economic nightmares of today.

We're the ones that are being expected to bring change, so why do we have to go through an entire undergrad of learning the old, outdated methods of manufacturing, only to have to find a specialized master program to begin to work on new ideas and processes??  Our course doesn't even mention environmental impacts of processes or materials! It's about time universities started updating their programs; because even if we don't pay for it through tuition, we'll still pay one way or another.

If you are a dedicated torrent user or at all interested in the future of file-sharing and you HAVEN'T been following TPB trial, Torrent Freak has an excellent summary of the trial (which is one of the longest ever in Swedish history), and I highly recommend checking it out. It's got be to at least as influential as the Napster trial in terms of copyright infringement lawsuits:

Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 7, Day 8, Day 9

Not to reiterate the many (highy valid) points made in the comment sections of all these articles, I will stick to one new point.  There is a serious problem with the way emphasis is placed on these kinds of issues (i.e. copyright infringement).  I don't want to get political, but why is TPB being sued for hosting torrents that *may* have had a negative impact on the entertainment industry, while the moronic American capitalists who came up with the nonsensical idea of derivatives and have directly damaged most industries in countries across the globe walk free with their pockets full? Where is the justice in that?  It's like saying wikipedia has caused book, bibliography, and encyclopedia sales to decline.  Why do people resist sharing information? We should be embracing the age of communication.  It's unbelievable how poorly designed not just the physical, but the political and economic worlds really are.