Over the weekend I have made massive improvements to my blog. I chose a theme and applied it quite well. I made a logo which is not really a logo but the name of the site using my AltSci font. I'm not too thrilled about the splash part on the main page but I'll figure out what I should do later. The comment system is working (I even caught a bug in Django while I was at it). The quote system is up on the front page and the About page. So what's new on the Brazilian front? I have downloaded 64 PDFs and 72 MP3s from Busuu and am turning them into a study guide for myself. At some point I intend to compile this data from my mind into lessons for English speakers. It could also be used for Brazilian Portuguese speakers to learn English. I'll have to see if I meet anyone who can test it out. Currently my setup is 2 pages and I have enough data for 5-10 pages. I plan to only bring 5 pages with me though. I'll be traveling light to keep only one bag. If I was more confident of where I was going and how I could get there I would probably take a light duffel bag. Having carried it enough trips I don't want that extra weight. Since my wrist is broken I won't be able to switch hands which would be annoying if I carry anything heavy. Limits are not necessarily bad. My website is limited by the time I have available. Though I could have saved time and made it a copy of my other blog, I decided that I need a bit of Python on my website.
Now seems like as good a time as any to advertise my other blogs and my projects. Currently I have a really cool project that is already making some steps. It's also written in Python Django and has about 105GB more data than this blog. Almost none of it is original, but don't let that stop you from visiting Philisophical Transactions. A blog post here wouldn't be complete without a link to my normal blog and my previous travel blogs: AltSci Europe and AltSci Japan.
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Nov 2, 2010
You may be aware of my work on RockBand 2 Drum "drivers". If I had written my code as a kernel module (and it would likely be accepted into the mainline), it would be easy to call it a driver. However, I wrote it using libusb and ALSA, which makes it a userland program. I feel that I made the right design choice. ALSA libraries are low enough latency and libusb allows efficient use of interrupts, so it works quite well. Also, adding any complex code to the kernel that isn't totally necessary seems like a risky endeavor.
Anyway, that code is here: RockBand 2 Drum Instrument for Linux
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June 10, 2009
Update July 23, 2009
Digg Diversity is a new project by AltSci Concepts. It uses the Digg API to calculate a more fair score for articles on Digg. Why is this algorithm necessary or preferable? Digg has an algorithm that is based entirely on profit, which is acceptable for a company like Digg. The more diggs that occur, the more profit that Digg makes, which means that they will accept, even encourage their users to game the system. The Digg front page algorithm which promotes articles to the front page with as few as 100 diggs means that a small number of people can control the front page of Digg by simply getting 100 like- minded people to digg their articles (and visa-versa). The company Digg benefits when corrupt users promote the same content repeatedly, but the overall community is diminished (especially those users who wish to see important non-repetitive content). This topic is extremely deep and deserves an essay but definitely not tonight on the night of the beta release of Digg Diversity. Many digg comments, blogs, and even a mashup that is currently offline have been written about this issue, but I hope to write the solution.
Digg Diversity is a entirely javascript mashup using the Digg API to retrieve important information about what data is found on Digg. The first set of results may be rather surprising. You will see a list of results quite similar to the front page of Digg. However, the order is by "divvs" which are a new calculated value based on timing and repetitiveness of the digger. The raw data can be found at the bottom of the page (there is a link that displays the data).
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July 23, 2009
Success is defined by goals achieved and hypothesis confirmed. I have succeeded in many ways in my project Digg Diversity and yet it is not nearly ready for version 1.0. It remains Beta because there are issues that a person cannot overlook. On the other hand, I am able to use it everyday without any important issues stopping me. I suspect that anyone who likes Digg and doesn't like users that abuse Digg's front page can use this as an alternative front page.
One issue that I'd like to address in version 1.0 is to allow a larger set of data to be shown and compared. By multiplying the number of articles shows by 20 and filtering out all those items that will be given a score of zero (or less than 1.0) from the current version, the competition will become quite a lot fiercer for Digg Diversity's front page. Items that would never show up on Digg's front page will show up at the top of some or even all of Digg Diversity's users' list. The main success in Digg Diversity's 1.5 month Beta so far is that it has perfectly followed my hypothesis that is far graver than I even imagined when I wrote a rant against Digg at the initial release of Digg Diversity. In fact, the data that I currently possess is far graver than anyone could possibly know besides Digg or the Cabals that run Digg's front page could guess.
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