lazer-guided commentaries

Last Year's Vintage

Here are a few thoughts, ideas, and random notes that I found today that I had jotted down while travelling briefly through Europe in September last year. I’m pretty sure I know what I was on about for a few of them; others are pretty opaque to me today.

  • Marriage List Database - this was an idea for a website company. The company would provide an online list of wedding presents that would then be available across department store chains, internationally, taking the traditional list-held-at-a-local-department-store-branch and scaling it up for Today’s Modern Citizen.

  • (this one’s pretty opaque) Simulated Erosion
    • particle system <– fluid dynamics
    • abrasiveness proportional to dust content
    • water level? viscosity (property of particle system?)
  • What kind of engines make the TGV go?

  • (so is this one) Waves are a self-organising network
    • scale free? decentralised?
    • investigate the cellular-automaton screensaver that implements those spiral “demons”
  • The economies of the world are grounded in time - the advent of mechanical efficiency (computers, AI etc) is a deflationary pressure

  • (10 Sep. 2003) Trip to the Eiffel Tower
    • The CBD looks like an exclusive clique of teenagers, standing by themselves looking insular on the other side of the city
    • You can see Notre Dame from the top of the Tower
    • You can see the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs Elysées
    • You can see something that looks like a Nuclear Power Plant
    • There’s a large park in view
  • (12 Sep. 2003) TGV to Avignon: We Go Fast