This section lists all blog posts, regardless of topic.
Floss / quick showersApril 20, 2007
The two newest addition to the list are "
Floss each day for a year", and, with Earth Day close by, "
3 minute showers for a year". After having three cavities this year it's probably a good idea to get in the habit of flossing... like most people, I probably average once or twice a week at best.
Here are some interesting facts that I've learned about water usage:
15 minute shower = 150 litres
10 minute shower = 100 litres
5 minute shower = 50 litres
3 minute shower = 30 litres
2 minute shower = 20 litres
bath = 150 litres = 15 minute shower
Just for fun, I've calculated the difference in water usage comparing the adult population of the US having one bath a day for a month VS having a 2 minute shower each day for a month:
220 million adults:
2 minute shower = 1.32 trillion litres of water
bath = 10 trillion litres of water
A little bit of carbon won't hurt the boy!April 13, 2007
When I was 10 I had the opportunity of staying with my grandpa and grandma Bigham for a week or two while my parents vacationed in Florida. I remember that my dear grandmother would always have the kitchen tidy and the breakfast table set before bed. The next morning, we would all gather at the little round table, often covered with a colourful table cloth, for breakfast. Grandma's jams were a delight. Her tart, sweet, raspberry freezer jam was my favorite.
One morning grandpa wasn't paying attention and did a fine job burning the toast. He pulled out these nicely blackened slices from the toaster to grandma's dismay. She gave him a disapproving remark to which he replied "A little bit of carbon won't hurt the boy"! Oh how I laugh remembering that! I found it strangely sweet when grandma would get after grandpa.
Hierarchical Temporal MemoryApril 13, 2007
As seen on Slashdot: Jeff Hawkins (founder of Palm Computing) has written an article entitled
Why can't a compute be like a brain. He covers progress since his book
On Intelligence and gives details on
Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM), which is a platform for simulating neocortical activity. Numenta has created a framework and tools, free in a "research release," that allow anyone to build and program HTMs.
Given a few days of free time it would be interesting to dabble with this stuff. Some noteable quotes from the article:
"Perhaps we've been going about it in the wrong way. ... Even so-called neural network programming techniques take as their starting point a highly simplistic view of how the brain operates."
"It is clear to many people that the brain must work in ways that are very different from digital computers. To build intelligent machines, then, why not understand how the brain works, and then ask how we can replicate it?"
I like this line of thinking, although I think I can answer the question of why computer scientists have shied away from the brain... let's be serious... if we had any reasonble success in figuring out how it works, then sure, we'd focus on it.
"My colleagues and I have been pursuing that approach for several years. We've focused on the brain's neocortex, and we have made significant progress in understanding how it works. We call our theory, for reasons that I will explain shortly, Hierarchical Temporal Memory, or HTM."
"The neocortex is a thin sheet of cells, folded to form the convolutions that have become a visual synonym for the brain itself."
"Because of the neocortex's uniform structure, neuro-scientists have long suspected that all its parts work on a common algorithm-that is, that the brain hears, sees, understands language, and even plays chess with a single, flexible tool."
"HTM is a theory of the neocortical algorithm."
If these guys are right, then watch out. But I've got my skeptics hat on.
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