Apple Training Series: iLife 08/ Michael E. Cohen, Jeff Bollow, Richard Harrington

ISBN: 0321502671

P375. Chpt 13 “Creating music with GarageBand”
Create project
Explore tracks and regions: real & software instruments
Recording new software instrument: on screen keyboard, musical typing, connecting MIDI, cycle a region, Arrange Track view (Track > Show Arrange Track), multiple takes, change track instrument.

Real instruments: connecting, adding, preferences settings, record short take, mix and effects.

P397. Understanding basic mixing.
Save as bak. Play. Check tempo, loudness of parts, even and finished, (it’s almost like explaining how to tell if a painting is done), impression of unmixed song.
Tempo slider, track mixer.

Vol slider: default is 0.
Level meters: avg level, peak level, clipping. Sticky – will stick and show peak.

Green to Yellow is safe. Red is clipping.
Pan wheel.

P240. “adjusting track volume is like adjusting water temperature in a sink with separate cold and hot controls. If you’re running both hot and cold water, and you want to make the overall temperature hotter, you can turn down the cold instead of turning up the hot. The same goes for volume — instead of making a track louder to hear it better, you might need to turn down the other tracks a bit.”

Export (compression).

P2409. Evaluate the song’s Output Level. Use master output vol slider to raise or lower the vol as needed.
* not to use auto-loudness setting.

Discover magazine/ Oct 2008

theme: fuel and alternative energy sources/ experiments (solar, ethanol, wind, fusion).

P36. Growing beef without the cow.

P51. “Rise of the cyborgs”. Brain implants (neural prosthesis) and trials with paralysed/ “locked-in syndrome” patients.

P66. Interview with William McDonough. See “”Cradle to cradle: Remaking the way we make things”.

P80. Article on the brain (Carl Zimmer), how research shows we also tend to react subconsciously.

P88. quote: Asperger believed that there is a link between mathematical and scientific genius and his syndrome, claiming that “for success in science and art, a dash of autism is essential.” (Asperger’s Syndrome: A form of autism marked by intense absorption in a very narrow range of special interests).

Asian geographic/ no. 64, issue 3, 2009

www.asiangeo.com
“green edition”

P28. “The future of Singapore’s energy industry”/ Alphonsus Chen. Entrepreneur Quek Yeow Hui spent $50,000 to import and install a small wind turbine at a Marine Terrace rooftop. NEA reported as saying low wind speeds in tropical regions make it economical to harness wind on a large scale. Dr. Jiang Fan from Singapore Polytechnic suggests coastlines and rooftops of high-rise buildings may have sufficient speeds. Singapore power plants burns the cleaner natural gas (phased out heavy fuel oil). Power grid is supported by burning of domestic refuse to power steam turbines. Also mentions other Green initiatives (some more successful than others) like Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) taxis. Concludes that Singapore is unable to change overnight from an economy reliant on oil.

P46. A Nepali village (Pulimarang) powered by solar.

Discover magazine/ Feb 2009

P15. “Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), which is used to make retail items like microchips and flatscreen TVs… NF3 lingers in the air for 550 years, on average, and is 17,000 times better at trapping heat than CO2 on a molecule-per-molecule basis. Today the effect of NF3 object climate is just 0.04 percent that of carbon dioxide, but its role could grow dramatically if more manufacturers start using it…”

P28. on VFi (vehicle wifi). Why current wifi won’t work. Microsoft trying out a new system.

P30. Carl Zimmer argues that the internet and digital devices are allowing us to tap onto our “extended mind”. Like how our arm is an extension of our mind/ brain, so are machines.

P45. Controversy over the choice of a lab rat (Sprague Dawley) by the US Environment Protection Agency, for a chemical evaluation programme. Controversy is on the Sprague Dawley being bred to have high resistant to certain chemicals, and may defeat the aim of this trial. Also controversial is the selection process has taken more than 10 years and the trial still has not begun.

P50. Article on the “X-prize”; origins, development, future plans, criticisms (duplication of efforts) and advocates (market-driven incentives).

P59. photosynthesis explained by quantum physics.
P61. Very accessible layman explanation of quantum mechanics, without dumbing down science. “Quantum mechanics holds that any given particle has a chance of being inaugurated a whole range of locations and, in a sense, occupies all those places at once… Until a scientist measures the system, a particle exists in its multitude of locations. But at the time of measurement, the particle has to “choose” just a single spot. At that point, quantum physicists say, probability narrows to a single outcome and the wave function “collapses”, sending ripples of certainty through space-time. Imposing certainty on one particle could alter the characteristics of any others it has been connected with, even if those particles are now light-years away.”

P64. Interview with 1972 Nobel laureate and neuroscienctist Gerald Edelman. “neural darwinism”. How he defines consciousness.
P66. Explains that consciousness has two levels: one is being aware of the present; the other is being Conscious of one’s consciousness. Cites William James (who says consciousness is a process). explains that puLling a finger from a hot stove may be reflex and being aware of pain. But it is true consciousness that makes us learn a lesson and subsequently not put a finger to what appears like a hotstove. he feels it is possible to create an artificial consciousness and to verify it requires a test involving the ability to communicate with It,s and it cannot be told what is the test, and the test changes continually to watch its reaction (woah, there’s a scifi story in there somewhere!) He also adds the artificial consciousness must be an artificial construct and not a live organism.
P68. Talks about a Brain-based Device (BBD) where it’s not controlled by Artificial Intelligence (i.e. Execute a defined set of algorithms) but modelled to work like mammalian brains (firing of neurons via computer simulation and sampling of external inputs).
P69. Says they have constructed something equivalent to a cat brain, and exhibits similar characteristics like real brains.

Beating the market 3 months at a time: A proven investing plan everyone can use/ Gerald Appel & Marvin Appel

ISBN: 0136130895

2008 edition.
US focused (in terms of the recommended financial pdts) but covers more than US market; basic principles are also non-geographic specific.

Writing is direct; explanations are easy to understand. Gives simple explanations for mutual funds, bonds, ETFs. On the whole, the book is suitable for those with a basic understanding of financial and investment approaches. I would say it’s above basic level and not quite intermediate level. Very accessible for the masses.

Basically advocates a regular 3-month review and “balancing” approach, based on a diversified portfolio. Provides suggested strategies on how to review, tweak, and achieve that desired portfolio.

Chpt 1, P2. key elements of a winning investment portfolio:
1. Balance
2. Diversification
3. Ability to outperform component benchmarks

There’s a tables to compare and contrast results of different mixes.

Makes the case that diversification (e.g. Different country markets) may not have the highest yield but tends to also not have the lowest yield. Recommends a 60/40 allocation in equities and bonds respectively.

P7. on how to decide on your blend: “your first step is to appraise your own financial and temperamental abilities to accept loss”.

P8. In caps “THE GREATEST MISTAKE YOU CAN MAKE IN THE STOCK MARKET IS TO TAKE A LARGER LOSS THAN YOU CAN AFFORD.”

P8. “every 50% loss means you need to make 100% just to breakeven… Every 25% loss means 33% just to make even.”

P9. Stresses diversification.

Chpt2, on advanced diversification. Example of a well-balanced diversification:
- based on industry sector (type of business) and geography (country)
- using mutual funds/ ETFs

P18. Advocates “active diversification”, i.e. “Rebalancing”. Makes the case that there are drawbacks to letting leading sectors become disproportionately large relative to whole of investment portfolio.

P20. Chart showing how Rebalancing strategy results in better returns in long run (30 years). But also points out some drawbacks to Rebalancing strategy (greater transactional costs).

P21. based on 8 segment multi-sector portfolio, each sector starting with 12.5% of initial assets. If one sector rises to 22.5% of the whole. If one allows for 10% deviation from avg, then one would sell off (10%, I think) and place the proceeds into a sector whose value has fallen far below original 12.5% allocation (seems to me like locking in profits and buying up lower cost units). I.e. “sell into strength” (sell higher relative to your own avg cost) and “buy into weakness” (buy lower prices) rather than “buy into strength” (i.e. Higher prices).

196. advocates starting early in savings and accumulation process.

P70. Overview of international equity landscape. Japan, emerging markets (i.e. Economies and capital markets still developing, like south korea, china, taiwan, south africa, brazil, india, russia, india, mexico).

How to Work with Just About Anyone: A 3-Step Solution for Getting Difficult People to Change/ Lucy Gill

ISBN: 0684855275

It takes courage to start the change with ourselves.

That was one point the book tried to make.

The 3-step process:

• What is the primary problem?
• What am I doing about the problem now?
• What do I need to do differently?

To identify the root problem, author recommends addressing these questions (note: you don’t try to speculate the “Why”):

• “WHO is doing
• WHAT that presents a problem
• To WHOM, and
• HOW is this behaviour a problem?”

Key messages from the book:

• We might be the problem
• Doing the same things will simply get the same results
• If conventional means don’t work, then consider acting unconventionally

P22. Start looking at ourselves and ask if our own actions are reinforcing the negative behaviours in others. How others act is also a response to our actions.

P 25. “so to solve their problems with each other, the question is not what’s wrong with Andy or with Carolyn or with Martha. The question is: What is each person doing that makes the other person act as he or she does and what do they need to do instead?”

Chpt 2, on how we help people drive us crazy:

• we attempt a reasonable solution that doesn’t work
• when person doesn’t change, we continue doing more of the same that isn’t working

P35. Caution about attempting to make up our own stories when trying to understand the issue/ person. The one sided view may prevent us from analysing what is it we do to provoke the other person’s behaviour.
P40. We get caught in our own logic; we don’t realise we’re doing the same thing over and over (or believe we already have); we can’t think of anything better to try.

P38. Checking out our story

• write down the problems we’re having with someone’s behaviour
• describe why prob exists (our “story” about the prob)
• write down what we think the other person’s story would be about our behaviour.

Approach:
1) what is the primary prob? (who, what, to whom, how). Emphasis on facts only (don’t speculate Why). P49.

2) p62. the first mistake is to think that we know why the other person is doing this.
P64. Second mistake: “I know what you’re up to”. (guessing people’s intentions; author suggests in her experience ppl are rarely right in guesses).
P65. Third mistake: “I know what you are”, i.e. Labeling ppl. E.g. “rude”, “uncaring”. These do not go into the Who is doing What to Whom and How (no Why).
P67. fourth mistake: “I know who’s right”.
All these are our own interpretations (“stories”). We should work on defining the problem (Who, What, to Whom, How) and distinguish bet speculating Why.

Chpt 5 – emphasises that it starts with looking at our own behaviours and asking if it could have inadvertently reinforced the problem. Case study where the author guides an employee out of a repetitive cycle, where she seeks out her boss to ask questions. She would like directions but boss gives general answers and thinks she can’t figure out things on her own. Suggests doing the opposite could be a good way to break the cycle. So instead of asking her boss questions each time they meet, she says nothing and lets him seek her out. Then instead of asking questions she describes what she’s doing and boss gives her useful suggestions. Author suggests it’s not necessarily the employee’s earlier actions were wrong. Just ineffective for the boss’ style.

common sense solutions that don’t work:

• Repeatedly urging change (try: doing opposite, create consequences or let natural consequences occur, encourage to do negative behavior more – but reposition it)
• trying to talk someone into liking my solution
• trying to get acknowledgement that I am right (resist one-upmanship; someone has to give way first)
• evasion, like hinting and hoping, lobing (msg directed to group rather than individual), stating generalities, avoiding the prob altogether
• endless preparation except taking action (because we refuse to acknowledge our fear/ apprehensions)

Chpt 10. Possible strategies:
do the opposite, outrageous, unexpected, challenge our own story, find a neutral party, consider off-limits options, question the advice I’m heeding, signal a u-turn (rather than abrupt change)

The wind-up bird chronicle/ Haruki Murakami

ISBN: 0099448793

Murakami invokes curiosity, the sort that draws you in. And then the unexpectedness of it all (sex) keeps you in. And then there’s seemingly Mundane that wonders if you’d encounter (1) and (2) again.

Wind-up bird’s “ten minutes is all I need” and then the “picture me naked; touch me” scene (how do you classify that into a genre? Contemporary Weird-kinkiness?) The chapter abruptly ends. I wonder what was that all about. And then I start on the next page looking for that weird Murakami-rush.

Starts with us being introduced to Toru Okada, who receives a weird phone call from a strange woman. Goes look for his missing cat. Meets a teenager neighbour who’s continuing her pretence of her injury to avoid school. He then meets a Ms Malta Kano, who claims she’s clavoiryant. Says her sister, Crete Kano, was raped by Toru’s brother-in-law who is described as another brilliant but deeply weird and intellectually dangerous person.

Slight twist when Crete Kano reveals to Toru that she’s a Call Girl, and met Toru’s brother-in-law as her client.

Another call from the mysterious woman.

Chpt 12, Lt. Mamiya’s story of a covert mission in WWII Manchukuo was an unexpected tale with bits of WWII history (pity though, if japanese readers might think this is another piece of wild fiction dreamed up by Murakami).

End of Chpt 25, title of book is revealed.

Then more letters from May Kasahara (they left me wondering what that’s all about).

And more wartime stories revealed by an old man; of a killer incharge of a concentration camp in Sibera. The connection seems to be that while the old man cannot change fate (the evil man cannot be killed, or that beings like Boris the Manskinner manifest themselves everywhere). And maybe all leads to Toru challenging fate and breaking the cycle. Although I wonder if there are other universes where Kumiko’s brother still lives.

Finally, a few more chapters later, the plot congeals. Kumiko reveals she has been compelled to cheat on Toru. And much was due to some vile actions by her brother. Toru seems to pass between what I understand to be an alternate reality. He manages to kill this faceless aspect of what is hinted to be the evil persona of Kumiko’s brother.

At the backcover, one review likened Murakami work as an ‘impressionistic work’. Pretty apt description, I think.

I think you’ll either enjoy the Murakami Weirdness (like how you tolerant the meanderings of a long-drawn joke to finally get the punch line) or you’d think it’s all a bunch of disconnected mumbo-jumbo. But there must be something that draws his fans.

I’ll read Murakami, for sure.

But only in between extended breaks

Analog science fiction & fact/ Nov 2008

Cited in Robert J. Sawyer’s “Wake” (part I of IV), “The Origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind” by Julian Jaynes. (is there such a book?)

Tom Easton Science Fact article, “The 3D Trainwreck: How 3D printing will shake up manufacturing” p50-63. On 3D-printing technologies, history, overview of how it works, applications (industry rapid prototyping, home application), costs, direction. He suggests affordability and availability of 3D printing technology will spell the doom for many small to medium sized manufacturing companies. But that with it will also mean new needs and business opportunities (doesn’t suggest any definitive apps though).

• www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/candyfab or www.candyfab.org
• reprap.org/bin/view/Main/ShowCase
• <a href="http://www.popsci.com/category/tags/3-d-printerwww.popsci.com/category/tags/3-d-printer
• www.david-laserscanner.com
• www.acuson.com

Tom Easton recommends:

• ISBN 9780765316448 the stars down under
• The one right thing, bruce corville ISBN 9781886778726 YA book

Letters:
Letter in response to Schmidt’s column where he mentions Web 2.0. Longer elaboration of web 2.0 by letter writer, prof of IT monroe college, john F. McMullen

I learned that David Palmer’s Emergence series “Candy Foster” was written 10 years ago. woah!

Palestine/ Joe Sacco

ISBN: 156097432X

Excellent contemporary graphic novel. The characters convincingly portrayed. Sacco has a journalist eye and a storyteller’s heart.

One might say his portrayal of the Palestine people’s plight and persecution is biased.

Maybe.

I have to admit I’m fed on a diet of seeing Israel as a victim. Yet by Sacco’s account, Israel the victor had carried out a campaign of suppression through curfews, creation of cheap labour pool by depressing the Palestine economy.

Sacco goes around interviewing Palestinians for their stories of how they have been treated. In a way, he’s digging for stories to sell.

Stories include accounts of the detention camps, of being jailed as a rite of passage of any Palestinian male. Of overly sugared tea. Of the hospitality of the middle-eastern culture.

Stories of how Israeli settlers (often migrants from Europe, who seem more prejudiced and violent than migrants from some other countries) form vigilante mobs and destroy their neighbour’s home. But what is unsaid is also the little petty retaliatory strikes by the Palestinians who throw stones. And the unfairness of other Palestinians who are persecuted simply because they are Palestinians.

Automatic hostile responses carried out by both sides, so much so that after a while, the endless cycle of tit-for-tat just made the question of who started what seemingly irrelevant.

The Israeli side of the story is presented by way of a conversation between Sacco and two Israelis, over coffee. It was a convincing to me the complexities of the issues involved. The realness of it. Hard to say who’s right and who’s wrong. Emotions are part of the responses to any discussion about the ongoing problems. Sacco uses that conversational piece to great effect, to say things without being academic. And finding there is no answer.

I’d think in another earlier era, this was how the Jews were persecuted. And perhaps in a later eon, the tables would have turned and the endless cycle of revenge continues, with power switching sides infinitely.

Sacco produced the graphic novel after spending two months with the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories in late 1991 and early 1992. Things certainly have changed since then. Or maybe not. I’m not certain.

What the graphic novel does capture, I believe, is the Palestinian situation at that time.

And what I appreciate is that the graphic novel doesn’t seek to politicise the events. The focus of all the anecdotes centres on the people. Ordinary people like you and I, who are drawn into the vicious cycle of hate, prejudice, violence, revenge and retaliation.

In an era before Twitter and the Iran elections, this graphic novel gave a glimpse of what life was like as a Palestinian living in the Occupied Territories.

Being and event/ Alaine Badiou (translated by Oliver Feltham)

ISBN: 9780826495297

Look up Ontology and Set Theory.

“Mathematics is Ontology”.

Hmm…

I took 15mins just to read 5 pages.

There were words that held no meaning for me, and where I understood individual words, I failed to appreciate the meaning of sentences.

Philosophy and Mathematics.

Right and Left brained.

Picked this book out of curiosity.

Couldn’t understand the book though.

It’s ground breaking work, if you’re into Philosophy.

This Wikipedia entry on Alaine Badiou proved to be more accessible to a layperson like me.