Showing posts with label Paranoid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paranoid. Show all posts

Friday, 3 February 2012

The art of risk management, Cthulhu and aeon long death

The secret thoughts of every SharePoint architect
"The nethermost caverns are not for the fathoming of eyes that see; for their marvels are strange and terrific.”– The Festival – H.P. Lovecraft

It’s reported today in the Washington Post and the ever fascinating IO9.com that the latest attempt to explore Lake Vostok is a mere 40ft or so from breaching the ice cap which has sealed the lake off from the rest of the world for the last twenty million years, you can read about it here exploration of lake Vostok and here Russian scientists prepare to enter sub glacial lake. Lake Vostok is the largest Antarctic sub glacial lake, it’s the size of Kuwait and it’s been buried under four kilometres of ice for between fifteen and twenty mega-years. This is a pristine and potentially utterly alien environment. The ice cover keeps it dark yet heavily oxygenated and the pressure and insulating qualities of the sheer volume of ice above it keep it liquid even though the average temperature of the water is below freezing point.

Monday, 30 January 2012

Zen and the art of Zombie special operations.


A PhD in Operation Market Garden? That'll do nicely
My name is Ed Fowler; I am a long term computer game addict. There I’ve said it. Not exactly controversial to those that know me but it’s still a strong statement of position. It’s not a harmless vice, It’s not without real world effects as well. For example during a blissful three months “gardening leave” when the dot-com bubble collapsed I had an extended period of doing bugger all at home. I could have used the time to up-skill, learn a language, get fit or actually do some gardening.  I spent it getting Zen-good at Return to Castle Wolfenstein. An admirable investment in total pointlessness I'm sure you’ll agree.

Friday, 27 January 2012

the dark side of marketing and analytics

too perfect for words..
“Data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.” Neuromancer: William Gibson

As I’ve mentioned before, once you get enough data in one place you can throw processor cycles at and reach some interesting conclusions pretty fast. What’s stopped us from doing this in the past was two simple factors, not enough accessible data and the price of processor cycles.