Exhaustion and Inspiration

Having gone on last time about efficiency and packing in as much as possible I'm now out for the count with a lurgy which has knocked me out for the last couple of days. Thankfully with Mathematica on the laptop and collaborators with instant message programs I've been able to continue contributing somewhat to the progress of the current project - a project which is going in all sorts of directions we'd never expected (the best kind of project in my mind).

With the lurgy currently winning I wanted to look for some inspiration (this was not going to come from Spanish daytime television!) and found a couple of great TED talks to share. One of the most incredible ones came from Craig Venter, who is currently running a lab which is pushing the boundaries of creating synthetic life. The hope is that we may be able to make lifeforms which can be tuned to perform processes that life wouldn't naturally evolve to do (at least not so efficiently) in an Earth-like environment. Things like converting high concentration carbon-dioxide back into combustible fuels. Anyway, the process of this is fascinating and well worth a watch:


Plus a talk from Nicholas Negroponte, the man behind One laptop per child, from a talk in 1984 on the future of huge computer interaction. Some remarkably insightful thoughts.

And lastly some rather wonderful theramin playing from Pamelia Kurstin.

Anyway, I'm going to wrap myself back up, make a hot drink and retire once more...