Category Archives: Uncategorized

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Saturday did as little as possible. Eventually baked some cinnamon espresso cookies. Then
prepped rice and fixings for sushi. Took results over to badgers. Ate lots.

Sunday headed over for Phasmatodea practice. Later
that evening headed over to The Nightlight to catch The No Neck Blues Band. Great show.

how to solve a problem

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Started searching around Wikipedia for information about problem solving approaches and techniques. Looking for some general information to possibly use to help structure the content of the linux troubleshooting guide I’ve been slowly working on.

One of the more interesting things I found was TRIZ, a problem solving approach oriented towards mechanical devices, based on study of a large number of Russian Patents. The idea basically being to determine the contradictions inherent in a problem, and then attempting to dissolve the contradictions. Take a look at this page to get a better idea.

The first two things that came to my two track mind were of course, what would be the equivalent “contradictions” and proposed dissolving strategies for software and/or creating music. The software case has a lot of obvious analogies to the machinery case. The music (and any “art”) for that matter is a bit more difficult. Need to think about that.

On a similar note, I found a web reference for the list of problem solving ideas I first saw in Conceptual Blockbusting. See the Flexibility in Strategies.

Anyone know of any similar ideas or approaches?

[view at adrianlikins.com ]

more cc

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I forgot I also had some noise pieces up at Blue Sound Of Death. So those are now under a Creative Commons Sampling Plus license as well.

That stuff is definitely in the “noise” category. You might like it if you like that sort of thing.

area CopyNight meeting

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Sorry for the late notice, but tonight
is the first CopyNight meeting in Raleigh.

CopyNight in Raleigh

from http://www.copynight.org

“CopyNight is a monthly gathering of people interested
in ensuring freedom for artists and tinkerers, fostering
innovation, and restoring the balance between the public
interests and intellectual property rights holders for
the benefit of all.”

See http://www.copynight.org for more
details.

[view at adrianlikins.com ]

screensaver ideas

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Once upon a time, I wrote a screensaver for xscreensaver. So, though I’ve barely looked at xscreensaver code in years, I still occasional think about ideas for screensavers.

1. A “meta” screensaver. This would render any other screensavers into a texture, that would get texture mapped to some 3d object. You could even go recursive if you wanted.

2. A version of webcollage that would point at images sources that are Creative Commons. This would be pretty easy.

3. A fake road map generator. Just randomly create something that kind of looks like a streep map. City maps would be easiest, but highway style maps would be cool as well. Think google maps, but totally bogus.

4. “old growth”, a screensaver that would draw what looks like a cross section cut out of a old tree, and then label the rings with historical dates and info. Something sort like this.

[view at adrianlikins.com ]

doodles under creative commons

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I’ve been on a free culture/creative commons/open source/etc kick recently. I am a huge fan of the idea.

So, I figured I should put up or shut up, so now, in addition to the Phasmatodea music[1], I’ve put my collection of doodles under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license. Enjoy.

[1] and, of course, a small but fairly widely used collection of open source code.

[view at adrianlikins.com ]