AFI Dallas has a new website up with all the films, venue and ticket information. I've already got about 10 films on my "to see" list from just a cursory glance.

It's been a couple weeks since the Boston bomb scare. I'm staggered by the fact that nobody seems to be upset with Boston. They did a poor job assessing a threat. The idea that any kind of electronics not branded with the logo of a major consumer electronics company is an I.E.D. is an unworkable policy for assessing threats.

You won't find the needle in the haystack by making the haystack bigger. They've got to eliminate false positives and shrink the haystack. They need a procedure for scoring I.E.D. threats. Does it have some kind of antenna for remote detonation? What is the power source for detonation? Does it have a timer circuit for timed detonation? Are there explosives attached? Was the device concealed? (Presumably you want to hide your bomb so its not discovered prematurely) These details should be simple to assess either up close by someone, or by having a robot/remote controlled camera observe the device.

Heck if you can create a robot that follows sunlight or radio waves, why not make one that follows bomb scents (like bomb sniffing dogs)? They don't even have to be very sophisticated. You can use Ant Colony Optimization techniques to create swarms to sniff out bombs. I'm getting into science fiction here but I can imagine a day when large cities create swarms to roam the city looking for threats. Each robot would report back periodically through the municipal wifi network.

democamp Dallas is this Thursday (2/15/07) from 6:30-8pm at Sabre Labs in Southlake. All of the *camp events that I've been to have been a lot of fun, and frankly gotten me excited about tech again. If you can make it please sign up on the wiki.

From the written word to web 2.0, how ideas are finding new ways to spread and mutate. Web 2.0 in 5 minutes.

There are some books that have chased after me for years. They pop up in conversations with other people over and over. Details of the plot leak into my head and I start thinking about how they work. But I never read them. Then I yield, read the book and understand why the book chased me all those years.

I finally read Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card, and I wish I had read it when I was younger. I might have had the courage to make different choices. I found it comforting to find someone else who thought like me and wanted to love his friends and family but felt alienated because of his responsibilities. That closeness with the main character is what made me really appreciate the last few lines of Card's introduction to the book:

The story is one that you and I will construct together in your memory. If the story means anything to you at all, then when you remember it afterward, think of it, not as something I created, but rather as something that we made together.

Big news in the Perplex City ARG. The Receda Cube was found by astro_random. He wins the $200k prize. I have a feeling puzzles like billion to one and riemann may go unsolved.

Season two of Perplex City starts this March.

iTunes played She Wants Revenge followed by New Order. There is no way that was random. It's like iTunes thought "you just listened to the copy, now I'll play the original." I wish I understood the crazy AI they call Party Shuffle.

I picked up C.B. Cebulski's Wonderlost and I hope he puts out more issues and everyone buys one. In the first issue he tells six stories, each illustrated by someone different, about teenage love, relationships on the cusp between friends and lovers, and the moments after it all falls apart.

He writes with an authenticity that brings filmmaker David Gordon Green to mind. Although he might capture a bit more of life's humor than DGG. The stories are tight. The dialogue, narration and paneling don't have any wasted effort. Perhaps what impresses me most is I'm so caught up with the characters I don't have any time to go second guessing their behavior when they make bad decisions. I saw my own choices in life echoed in Wonderlost's characters. Sometimes that was a punch to the gut and sometimes it made me smile and get all nostalgic.

It's also the only comic book I've read that comes with a mix CD track list at the end.

You can read one of the stories, Make Up, online. Here are pages 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 .