Christoph Bussler
Interesting Things
An effort of preservation, restoration, and creation of an historical site at the old Flying Tigers airstrip in Guilin, China is documented here: http://www.flyingtigerheritagepark.com.
An interesting concept that might help dealing with the spiraling cost of real estate, space as well as energy can be seen at http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com.
An amazing architecture is the "City of Culture" in Spain, see here: http://www.cidadedacultura.es/?lg=ing.
The famous ice hotel is here: http://www.icehotel.com/Winter/Home/.
Ever seen a house being built under 3 hours? Watch here the world record: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2HqW-AAb20.
Some clever architecture work: http://www.rael-sanfratello.com/
Interesting approach to shelter building: http://www.shelter20.com/
Marc Andreessen's blog: http://blog.pmarca.com/. (Specifically on startups: http://pmarca-archive.posterous.com/the-pmarca-guide-to-startups-part-4-the-only)
Shai Agassi's blog: http://shaiagassi.typepad.com/.
HPI Genealogy of Relational Database Management Systems: http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/naumann/projekte/rdbms_genealogy.html.
The 451 Group has a database poster here that includes also NoSql databases: http://blogs.the451group.com/information_management/2012/11/02/updated-database-landscape-graphic/.
Education undergoes a major shift currently, not only at the college and university level, but also in schools.
Fun for database geeks: http://xkcd.com/327/.
Fun? http://www.crashbonsai.com.
Energy efficient beer bar: http://www.bierbike.de/.
A line rider: http://www.linerider.com/.
All my life for sale: http://www.allmylifeforsale.com/
Sydney Olympics swimming competition with one swimmer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zjCc_VyxM4
About female and male brains: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Oyo2aK912o
Pacific Northwest tree octopus: http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/
Phone dependency of teenagers: ../interesting_things/zits_01.pdf
History of the Internet http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/ and an interview with Kleinrock, see here: http://www.computer.org/portal/web/computingnow/internet40?utm_source=bronto&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Read+Kleinrock%27s+views&utm_content=chbussler%40aol.com&utm_campaign=CN34--October+21+2009
An analysis of growth (income) vs. health (life expectancy) for the last 200 years: http://www.wimp.com/twohundred/
Amazon has implemented the modern equivalent of the Mechanical Turk: http://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome.
A fun and interesting presentation on Human Computation is here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8246463980976635143&hl=en.
Some folks believe in replacing oil as a future strategy: http://www.swiftenterprises.com/.
3D Printing is coming in all aspects of product development. Examples are http://www.emergingobjects.com/
A Leadership Primer from General (Ret.) Colin Powell, Secretary of State: http://www.chally.com/enews/powell.html.
A simple management approach: http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/worlds-simplest-management-secret.html?nav=pop&sf7364770=1
A very interesting exhibition is http://www.bodyworlds.com/en.html. I have seen it in San Jose in the TechMuseum and it is very unusual and very impressive. Some more info is here: ../interesting_things/bw_studentguide_200606.pdf.
Foundation and Museum on long term thinking: http://www.longnow.org/.
Skaters and scooters start going high-tech. BMW presented on example, it is here: http://www.popularmechanics.com/outdoors/adventures/1277371.html.
Another high-end scooter company is LiquidRoam at http://www.liquidroam.com/
Tear drop trailers are a cheap and easy way to get around, see some models here at http://www.cozycruiser.com/ and http://www.socalteardrops.com/. Another new vendor who also rents tear drop trailers is here: http://vacations-in-a-can.com/. And more teardrops: http://www.golittleguy.com/teardrops/.
Interesting campers are here at http://www.airstream.com/product_line/touring_coaches/westfalia_home.html and http://www.westfalia.org/?q=node/35. The super high end of RVs can be found here: http://www.unicatamericas.com/. More of those are here: http://globalxvehicles.com/.
An interesting bike / stroller / scooter company is Torker at http://www.torkerusa.com/.
More interesting attempts to catch the green market are here: http://www.t-rexvehicles.com/ and http://www.flytheroad.com/.
Some accessories for bikes to stay visible: http://www.monkeylectric.com/.
Cars had 60 miles/gallon efficiency a long time back: http://spectrum.ieee.org/slideshow/green-tech/advanced-cars/the-microcar-tradition.
Amount of software on cars: http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/advanced-cars/this-car-runs-on-code [Cached]
Kick bikes are a lot faster than scooters: http://www.kickbikeamerica.com/index.html
Private and commercial space rides can be booked here: http://www.virgingalactic.com/. Trips start at the Spaceport America: http://www.spaceportamerica.com/.
Renting the Necker Belle cat can be done here: http://www.neckerbelle.virgin.com/. She is part of an exclusive collection: http://www.virginlimitededition.com/en/vle
Future Models and Concepts:
Build your own car here: http://www.localmotors.com/
A marketplace run by stocks for predicting interesting events and outcomes can be found here: http://www.intrade.com/.
Lessig
Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig (http://www.lessig.org/) has a very unique style of presentation using the Microsoft PowerPoint tool (or any other tool of this particular nature. A great example is "free culture" at http://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/free.html. Many things have been written about his style, and even a web site is dedicated to his refreshing approach (http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2005/10/the_lessig_meth.html).
This style was very appealing to me as I have given many PowerPoint presentations myself and I had to sit through many, many more. My experience with this style is that first, it is a lot easier to prepare the presentation, second, it forces to really get the point down in a few words, but third, more importantly, the audience is fascinated and is really paying attention. Not only because it is a new style, but mainly because it is easy to instantaneously recognize the slide contents, but also because the slides are presented in a rapid way.
I can only recommend trying out this style and experience the enormous difference in situation yourself.
White board Animation
I recently came across another great style of presentation, a narrative on a white board, but in high-speed. Have a look here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&feature=player_embedded# and here: http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/videos/.
Peter Denning introduces his ongoing work on the Great Principles of Computing in an ACM Ubiquity interview at http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/interviews/v8i22_denning.html. The site about the Great Principles of Computing is at http://cs.gmu.edu/cne/pjd/GP. I was particularly interested in the topic of coordination and wrote down some thoughts in my research section: research_work.html#PrinciplesOfComputing.
Robots are a fascinating development and many different forms are developed currently, research-wise, but also for practical use. Examples are the DARPA Grand Challenge (http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/index.asp), a company called iRobots that has a whole variety of robots, including a do-it-yourself kit (http://www.irobot.com/index.cfm), the Lego NXT kit in the Mindstorm series of Lego (http://mindstorms.lego.com/).
A different kind of robot is IvanAnywhere, a remote robot that is a surrogate of a remote office worker (http://news.therecord.com/Business/article/236315).
Yet another type of robot are nanorobots, an example can be seen here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanocar.
Robots can fly, too, as seen here: http://blogs.spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/2007/10/09/are_robotic_dragonflies_the_go.html.
Advanced are made in unknown territory: http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19768/?a=f.
A robot is used in a telegarden: http://www.ieor.berkeley.edu/~goldberg/garden/Ars/
Robots as combination of blocks: http://www.modrobotics.com/
An interesting approach to information management for social computing around a person is here: http://www.iyouit.eu/portal/.
The effort "one laptop per child" can be found here: http://www.laptopgiving.org/.
Obama's proposed budget can be found here. The introduction is very interesting to read: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/assets/fy2010_new_era/A_New_Era_of_Responsibility2.pdf [Cached]
n typ f ntrstng stff s tht vn wtht th vwls y cn stll rd th txt prfctly. Whl scntfclly thr mght b strght frwrd xplntn fr ths, fnd t fcntng. nd, t svs lt f spc, t.
(On type of interesting stuff is that even without the vowels you can still read the text perfectly. While scientifically there might be a straight forward explanation for this, I find it fascinating. And, it saves a lot of space, too.)
The Z bag is a bag at the end of the alphabet that collects a random set of interesting things:
At this point this is a random selection of zero energy and energy efficient housing links:
© Christoph Bussler, 1991 -