Author: Steven Garrity

SpreadFirefox.com Likes Me

by Steven Garrity

Slice illustration

Being as humble as I am, it can be difficult for me when I’m showered with praise. However, it does soften the humility blow when the praise is written cleverly and with wit. Such is the case in my selection as Volunteer of the Week at SpreadFirefox.com.

SpreadFirefox.com, is a community site focused on promoting the Firefox browser through a variety of campaigns. They’ve been tracking the progress as 2 million copies of Firefox Preview Release 1 have been downloaded in the last 10 days.

The best part (after, of course, the illustration of myself in the style of the Slice of the Month) is being referred to as the “Martha Stewart of Web Browsers”.

Thanks!

 

Firefox on Local CBC Radio

by Steven Garrity

CBC Radio’s head geek, Tod Maffin, did a great piece about Firefox for CBC Radio today. I was invited into the local evening CBC Radio show, Mainstreet with Matt Rainnie to talk about the local connection we have to Firefox.

Today, Mainstreet played Todd’s piece and followed up with my interview. Listen to the two pieces together (6.4MB MP3 – 16 minutes).

I’m reluctantly becoming a local media representative for all things Firefox. I’m talking to the evening TV news tomorrow afternoon. It’s not a full-page spread in the New Zealand Herald, but it’ll do.

 

Quirks & Quarks on the Long Term Issue of Nuclear Waste

by Steven Garrity

Darlington Nuclear Power Plant

This week on Quirks & Quarks, Canada’s weekly science program on CBC radio discussed the issue of long term (really long term) nuclear waste management.

The program was well produced, covered the topics from interesting angles, and generally made for great listening. Eerie vignettes of speculative future news-bites were read by CBC host Michael Engright.

Listening to various scientists debate how best to deal with nuclear waste of time-lines that extend well over 10,000 years goes a long way to convince you that humanity is simply not capable of dealing with issues longer than our recorded history. I was reminded of the rule of thumb: don’t trust a warranty that purports lasts longer than the company offering it has existed.

The 9 minute segment is available for download in a 3.6MB Ogg file or or a 5.5MB MP3 file.

 

Live from the Formosa #2 – Now with Topics!

by Steven Garrity

Live from the Formosa #2

We’ve taken a second shot at our little tech-talk-radio thing we call Live at the Formosa (even though it’s not really live). This time, we’ve taken some advice on recording and should have significantly improved (if still relatively poor) recording quality.

This time, we also armed ourselves with some specific topics which should bring some more coherence to the conversation. That said, we feel it just went on too long (especially my Firefox bit). Next time, we’ll try to keep it under 30 minutes.

Topics this week include:

  • Steven (me) on the Firefox 1.0 Preview Release
  • Dan on the silverorange stuff website
  • Peter on his voice-over-ip/telephony experiments

Listen to Live from the Formosa #2 (download the 11MB MP3 file).

 

Radio Program Recounts September 11 Hijackings

by Steven Garrity

At risk of contributing to the ongoing media noise about “terrorism”, I am intrigued by a 1-hour radio program titled Witness to Terror about the September 11 hijacking government 9/11 Commission.

The program includes recordings of audio transmissions from planes, recordings of air traffic controllers, military transmissions, and eye-witness accounts. It is chilling.

If you’d rather not relive the day of the hijackings, don’t listen to this. If, however, you share my morbid curiosity, this program is fascinating, but also sad and disturbing.

Listen to the 1-hour RealAudio stream.

The commission examined how air traffic controllers, emergency services, and the military dealt with the situation. While, of course, it makes sense to examine how our institutions dealt with the hijackings, it sounds like people did what they could.

 

Bake Your Noodle with Cellular Automata

by Steven Garrity

A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram

A few years ago, Stephan Wolfram published a 1200+ page book boldly called A New Kind of Science. Wolfram had been apparently working on the concepts for about 20 years. He was an early Sun engineer and went on to create Mathematica, a powerful mathematics application.

When the book came out, the reaction was somewhat confused. Here was a known genius, finally releasing the results of his life of his work. There was anticipation that it might have the impact of Newton’s Principia or Einstein’s Special and General Theory of Relativity. However, when it came out, most couldn’t figure out if it was important, because they couldn’t understand it.

Time will tell how significant Wolfram’s work will be, but in the mean time, for those of us with a passing interest in physics, computing, and philosophy, there is a way around reading the encyclopedic work. The web audio site IT Conversations has available for download a talk by Stephen Wolfram at the SDForum Distinguished Speaker Series.

The talk isn’t easy to grasp, but he keeps things out of the stratosphere for comprehension by we mere mortals. It would be nice to have video, since he makes reference to some visuals during his talk, but the audio is worthwhile. The talk can be streamed or downloaded in MP3 format from ITConversations.com.

 

Acts of Volition Radio: Session 13

by Steven Garrity

Acts of Volition Radio: Session Thirteen This, the thirtheenth session of Acts of Volition Radio includes several tracks from the Future Soundtrack for America compilation CD I mentioned last week. There are also a couple of other tracks that warmed my heart in recent weeks.

Songs for the future of America (and Canada). Recorded Wednesday, September 8, 2004 by Steven Garrity. Run time: 30min.

Session Thirteen Playlist:

  1. They Might Be Giants – Tippycanoe and Tyler Too
  2. Mike Doughty – Move On
  3. Clem Snide – The Ballad of David Icke
  4. Nada Surf – Your Legs Grow
  5. Joseph Arthur – In the Sun
  6. The Trews – Tired of Waiting

For more, see the previous Acts of Volition Radio sessions.

Acts of Volition Radio
Acts of Volition Radio
Acts of Volition Radio: Session 13
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