I just started playing with Disk Inventory X, a nice treemap diskspace visualizer for Mac OSX. (Windows users can use the older and more complete WinDirStat to do something similar.)

Disk size has nothing to do with importance, but I still get a weird feeling seeing my music collection as a big blue block some 50 times bigger than the project I’ve been working for almost two years. Now I wish I had a treemap for how I spend my time during the day…

Update: and for Linux there’s KDirStat, which is apparently older than either of the other two…

Technology Review recently declared they are trying to get back to being more science & analysis, less breathless hype. Let’s hope David Talbot’s Terror’s Server in the February ’05 issue was just still in the pipeline before they made that decision. Here’s the letter to the editor I just sent:

David Talbot’s “Terror’s Server” was the kind of rambling, analysis-free hand-wringing we came to expect from the mainstream press in the mid 90s, not from Technology Review in 2005. Talbot’s main point that terrorists are (gasp) using the Internet is obvious and trivial. Terrorists are also using telephones, SUVs, credit cards, textbooks and mail-order catalogs to plan their attacks. Why is there no call for the automobile industry to “fix” their terrorist SUV problem?

The Net amplifies individual voices, be they the voices of civil rights activists, cancer survivors or terrorists. The real issue is not whether terrorists use the Net (just like everyone else does these days), but whether society is better off allowing individual voices to be so easily heard. This is an important debate with historic undertones; Gutenberg’s press amplified Luther’s 95 theses and led to hundreds of years of war and bloodshed — and to the Protestant Reformation and Renaissance. Please, next time address the issue directly instead of simply hiding behind the terrorism flag.

Bradley Rhodes
PhD, MIT Media Lab (2000)

The Makyoh (Japanese for “magic mirror”) is an ancient art that can be traced back to the Chinese Han Dynasty (206 BC — 24 AD). They were made of metal, usually with an intricate pattern carved or cast on the back and the front polished to a mirror finish. The front looks like a smooth reflecting surface, but when sunlight or other bright light is reflected onto a wall a glowing pattern emerges. Usually the image seen would be the same as the image on the back of the mirror, often an image of the Budah or other focus for meditation. The art later moved to Japan (especially Kyoto), and after missionaries brought Christianity into Japan in the mid 1500s many mirrors were made with secret images of the Holy Cross or of Christ. Because Christianity was punished at the time, many Christians wore such magic mirror as a secret sign of their faith.

I just received a modern makyoh from the Grand Illusions toy shop, a wonderful site for exotic, clever and scientific toys (and they now accept PayPal). One thing I love about Grand Illusions is that they include videos and articles about how their toys work, including the magic mirror. Much as I respect the secrecy magicians have for their tricks, I much prefer the magic scientists perform — real magic isn’t spoiled when you know the secret, it’s even more amazing.

I’ve posted a few other pictures on my pictures page.

I just finished hooking up voice over IP so it services all my house phone ports, with the Motorola Voice Terminal hiding in the closet along with the house’s patch panel, DSL modem and firewall router where it belongs. I can’t say it was totally painless, but most of the effort was just gathering the right tools, connectors & knowledge. Useful resources included this general phone wiring primer and this one specifically on how to distribute VoIP throughout a home. Since I was starting kinda from scratch, I also found this basic page on how the heck to use a punch-down tool useful.