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Rudy Rucker

Rudy Rucker is a writer, a mathematician and a computer scientist. Born in Kentucky in 1946, Rucker moved to Silicon Valley when he turned 40. Rucker has published twenty-five books, primarily science-fiction and popular science. He was an early cyberpunk and an editor at Mondo 2000. He often writes SF in a style is characterized as transreal. His most recent novels were Frek and the Elixir, a far-future epic about a boy's galactic quest to restore Earth's ecology and As Above So Below, a historical novel based on the life of the sixteenth century painter Peter Bruegel.  Rucker is a professor emeritus of computer science at San Jose State University, where he created a number of freeware programs relating to chaos, artificial life, cellular automata, higher dimensions, and computer games. He is presently working on The Lifebox, the Seashell and the Soul, a nonfiction book about computers and the nature of reality. Rucker's website can be found at www.cs.sjsu.edu/faculty/rucker or at www.rudyrucker.com.


blogger appears to have been haxx0red

Not sure if the boingboingers can log in to note this, but Tom plasticbag.org Coates reports that some proportion Blogger users have been locked out of their accounts, and various other freakiness. No indication of how many - this account seems fine, for example. More news when I hear it (or when you send it to me). Metafilter is also down, which isn't helping the spread of info. Content is safe for now, but if someone in charge can shut down the blogger server... well, that might be a good idea :(. I'll post links to where the Bloggers are gathering and other news I hear to this QuickTopic. Please only post if you have confirmed, useful info. Thanks!


posted by Danny O'Brien at 8:36:29 AM | permalink


prometheus does picture books

kevin kelly has authored a 600 image photo essay of his travels in asia. the book, asia grace, looks very good and my copy is on the way from amazon. but the best part to me- the part that had me hoping up and down excitedly like a little monkey- are his production notes for the book. they read almost like a how-to for making a frickin' coffee table book with off the shelf normal consumer compu-parts.. admittedly he's a magazine editor, but it's still one hell of a proof of concept for yet another amateurization of the previously professional. that's one more excuse gone...

posted by quinn norton at 12:47:47 AM | permalink


the livable city

People who know me well enough, or google well enough, to uncover out my weirder behaviours will know that I can't drive. It's not some high-falutin' statement about the environment. I'm just not very good at remembering which pedal does what. Nonetheless, I'm always rather selfishly pleased when groups start working to make cities more pedestrian-friendly - especially one as walking-unfriendly as San Francisco. Livable City is a plan to make SF a people-friendly city, and that includes some great ideas on green areas, human-sized planning, and making modern urban areas walkable not drivable. I'm not sure they'll go for my main SF pedestrianising plan - the removal and paving of several prominent hills in the area - but any little bit helps. I also like that their launch party has "bicycle valet parking". Even though I can't ride a bike either. Damn those pedals!


posted by Danny O'Brien at 12:26:10 AM | permalink


picture of a stamp edited with braille spelling 'fucked' at the bottom. tee hee!

there is no hidden meaning to this blog title

Joe Magee worked as a digital illustrator for the Daily Telegraph, Britain's largest right-wing newspaper, for eight years. Occasionally, he'd hide little braille messages in his artwork. Messages like "Sweat of the Workers" and "Thatcher Fucked Us". He managed to get quite a few out before they spotted him. Kudos for sneaking in both "This Publication Supports Body Fascism" and "You Are Too Fat" - self-fulfilling subversive subliminals! (Thanks, fish!).


posted by Danny O'Brien at 10:32:35 PM | permalink


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