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Monthly Archives: July 2007

List of tallest structures in the world

Another fascinating article on Wikipedia:
“This is a list of tallest structures in the world, past and present of any type. Most of the tallest structures are television broadcasting masts, followed by a mix of the taller tower-type structures (like the CN Tower) and the taller high rise buildings (like the Sears Tower). Scattered among these [...]

Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN)

I never knew how ISDN actually worked, apart from the fact it sent digital signals over the the POTS’ copper wires. Wikipedia has a good article about it.
At the moment I am taking two distance education courses (Convex Optimisation and Statistical Machine Learning) which include video delivery through a Polycom video conferencing system. I assumed [...]

Pd (Pure Data) and friends

I recently downloaded and started playing with Pd (written by Miller S. Puckette, the same chap who started Max/MSP).
For reference, these are some good sites to learn about Pd and download loads of goodies to extend its functionality:

The community-run Pd portal

py/pyext: Python script objects (for MSP too)
GridFlow A Multidimensional dataflow processing library [...]

The Quantum Theory of Immortality

James Higgo’s summary paper “Does the ‘many-worlds’ interpretation of quantum mechanics imply immortality?” gives some very practical examples of the implication of this very mind-bending way of viewing our universe. Would you like to put your head in front of a machine gun barrel?

Be Your Own Weather Person

The Bureau of Meterology uploads the latest measurements from its radar stations from across our big brown land onto their website every 10 minutes, often with multiple resolutions. I find it most useful for two reasons:

If it is overcast outside, this will definitively confirm the possibility of rain.
If it is not overcast outside, you can [...]

The Internet Communications Engine

Ice, as it’s known, appears to be a relatively new competitor in the middleware communications layer. They compare its performance to TAO and come out better in many respects. It’s always easy to come out better than DCOM since that only runs on Windows! Although they boast a nice package list, it nevertheless appears very [...]

Listen to iTunes shared libraries outside your LAN

How about, say, on your WAN?
You can for free with Simplify.

Cross-computer bookmark synchronisation

The following are three major extensions for bookmark synchronisation if you have Firefox installed across multiple computers:
Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer (via their servers)

Bookmarks Synchronizer (FTP) (via your own FTP server)

Google Browser Sync (using the Google toolbar, does more than bookmarks, via your Google account)