New open source projects

My research has generated two new open source projects recently:
Wavechild 670 (GPL license)
A wave digital filter-based emulation of a famous stereo tube limiter from the 1950's.

Turn-taking measurement tools (BSD-style license)
Tools for measuring the quantity of turn-taking present in the behaviour of a group of agents.

The links also give the references for the associate research. Part of the idea is that academic research, open source and Wikipedia are all on a massive collision course for Knowledge 2.0. Or maybe more accurately, Knowledge N+1, because open source and Wikipedia are constantly changing. Soon the academic topics will be as open and fluid as say, the Linux kernel. Some smart person will probably be the spearhead of each topic, but there will be many contributors and the development of ideas will be out in the open.

Peter

There's something wrong with my toes

Imagine this scenario:

You go to the doctor and he says "I'm sorry, there's no reasonable cure for your condition. It'll be with you the rest of your life, and you just have to ignore it. I'm sorry. However, some people find that a daily dose of snake oil helps. You can give it a try if you want."

So you go home, with a heavy heart, but you know that you're an engineer / salesperson / mechanic / person on extended involuntary holiday (possibly seeking employment) / whatever and that he's a doctor. He knows best. So you go and buy some snake oil and start taking your daily supplement with your cornflakes in the morning.

Then one day you think, "Gosh, this snake oil is rather expensive stuff. I wonder how it works." So you open up Google and to your horror you read that snake oil does nothing, except for rare causes of earlobe inflammation in pregnant women on extended submarine voyages. Furthermore, you read that 81% of doctors admit to prescribing placebo medications and that the preferred method is to advise people to take snake oil. But you also read the the placebo effect can make a big improvement to people in a surprisingly large number of cases. But now you know that it's just a placebo and you think it won't work and you can't bear to buy useless things. You can understand the doctor's perspective, but you're kinda annoyed that he lied to you, after all the confidence you put in him.

So what do you do?

Don't do the Google search in the first place.

Peter

OSC Monitor program

Today's project was to write an Open Sound Control (OSC) monitor program.

You can download an OSX application, or the original Python source code at:

http://code.google.com/p/oscmonitor/

This is my first Tkinter GUI with Python.

Peter

Sharing stuff

I've come to a new level of belief in sharing stuff. As in practically, loaning things out to people. I don't use half the stuff I have all the time.

Maybe what I should really do is sell some of the stuff I don't really use at all.

But about the stuff that I use occasionally, I think I'd like to make more of a policy of loaning stuff out.

Does anyone want to borrow anything?

Peter

Sick day, I donno, whatever

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Peter