aesmael

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

The preview of Wave I had requested access to did not arrive until late November, and I did not begin using it until early December as I was busy writing previously. I have made a point of using it often since then and so far I am liking it a lot.

Wave seems very useful for the purposes I have been wanting to put it to, working on collaborative fiction projects or for small editorial review of public writings like this one. So far this has been encouraging and I have been experimenting with new ways of organising my ideas, as well as being for me quite productive. So, pending the participation of other people, Wave is already succeeding at everything I wanted out of it, except that I have not yet been able to try it for role-playing gaming.

I do have some complaints or frustrations so far though. Right now I am using Chrome because the main wave I was editing was too jittery in Firefox for me to even get the cursor to where I wanted it or, when I finally managed that, to see what I was doing - with every character typed the view would jump to the bottom or the top of the wave or sometimes to actually show where I was working, though this was rare and seldom persistent.

Whenever I experience issues like that where a Google product has problems on Firefox but not on Chrome I tend to suspect Google of discreetly encouraging use of their browser over others especially if it used to work fine. But Wave at least is still in experimental stages and for others I have not ruled out some odd interaction with extensions in Firefox, something I should really test more thoroughly, so that could well be only a product of my regular cynicism toward business.

I would also like to be able to have more than one wave open at a time, since although I tend to give primary focus to one thing I am working on I tend to be inspired to make smaller tweaks to other projects at the same time. This is something I value about tabbed editors like Notepad++, although as a complaint it may have more to do with my connection speed being currently very slowed, making quick switches between documents online a hassle, although I do think I would rather not close something I am actively working on just to add a couple of lines to something else.

Otherwise I am quite happy with Wave so far. I think it does everything I was wanting out of it.

Since it is being promoted as an alternative communication tool to email, one that will be available to non-Google entities to provide in the future also, I am finding myself preferring to refer to it as Wave rather than Google Wave for now. They have already anyway assured themselves market dominance through this period of exclusivity I think.

I suspect Google is not going to be creating a desktop client since they would rather people use their browser, although someone else might make one, and I expect once out of preview there will be a Wave app added to Google apps.

1. Thank You Thursdays: Your (Notice I Didn't Say Female) Brain [via gentle_gamer. Comments to the post made me warier of this video. Did she have that brain cut in half to illustrate her point? Am pretty sure most brains I have seen are in a single piece unless cut. Much of her described experience of having a stroke is not unfamiliar to me, if to a greater degree. Not, I stress, identical, but apparently similar to something which can be accessible to me. If I were to release certain brakes, if I could remember how. I have a lot of hostility to the frame in which she presents her thesis, despite finding much recognition or even agreement in the details.
   
   I dislike the way people jumped on ropty's comment ("Non-gendered? Dividing the world into two parts, one is linear, unemotional, calculating and the other about feeling, emotions, timeless oneness. Gee, that sounds rather gendered to me.") because this is a thing which is done, this is a way in which brain functioning is presented and those traits are very gendered in this society. Also that my readings of other writings on neurobiology suggest this is a highly oversimplified perspective on human brain hemisphere functioning, though as this was a talk for a lay audience that may have been deliberate. And it still seems to me her described experiences are very 'on point' even if I am not so fond of her presentation of them.
   
   I wonder if making such experience accessible at will would have the effect on the world Dr Taylor describes.]
2. Video: Blaser tournament unwisely fits Japanese robots with lasers -- PEW PEW [via soltice. If we intercut this with some footage of people we could make a movie of it.]
3. New Hubble Images Reveal Plethora of Interacting Galaxies [via soltice. Pretty!]
4. Young feminists just want to "go wild and pole dance" [via gentle_gamer.]
5. How To Sing Like A Planet [via gentle_gamer. Wherever there be medium and motion, music. The article makes me angry, with it's talk of 'merely' as if scientific explanation of such magnificent happenings cannot be also magnificent, wondrous or beautiful themselves. I lost a lot of esteem for the writer's prior musings when I read that part.]
6. Atheism is a condom for your mind [via soltice. The part I disagree with is the phrasing suggestive that removing religious belief is a part and precursor to mental hygiene and health -- I would place taking care of the mind first, and if that leads to the removal of religion then so be it. Someone eventually said so too.]
7. Equality Through Intimidation? The Houston HRC Dinner Protest [via gentle_gamer.]
8. Comical Surroundings [via soltice. This is interesting but I think I would not like my furniture to be displaying always the same images and words. After so many repetitions reading, wearying.]
9. Modular, shape-shifting robots get right back up to creep you out [via soltice. Shiny! Still a ways to go before they are as capable as the version seen in Terminator 2 though.]
10. Australia to Remove Antigay Discrimination From 100 Laws [via soltice. An improvement, but not enough.]
11. Maintaining Moore's law with new memristor circuits [via soltice. Fascinating (a thing said when {in this case} interested but uneducated in a subject).]

1. Vaccination doesn't cause autism volume what-are-we-up-to-now? [And yet we see how well the continued lack of evidence substantiating a connection is received. *sigh*]

soltice

pazi_ashfeather

1. Dark Matter and Fifth Forces [Unfortunately I know this stuff less well than I ever did, but still a moment of "Oh wow, that is really interesting" in reading.]

1. Biodiesel Mythbuster 2.0: Twenty-Two Biodiesel Myths  Dispelled [via soltice. Long, interesting. Not something I am really qualified to evaluate. Looks decent though.]
2. Electric Skateboard (Double Comic) [via gentle_gamer. skipped because I am not reading xkcd yet.]
3. Gibson intros SG Robot Guitar, new edition of Les Paul version [via soltice. My first thought was that this must be a guitar designed by William Gibson. I still do not know.]
4. What is the big deal about stuff white people like? [via gentle_gamer. When I started reading this I thought I would have some quick, possibly snarky thing to say in response, but it turned out to be a serious criticism of the blog, one that made a lot of sense to me. Oh, one thing to add. I am inclined to agree with the comments to this post that 'Stuff White People Like' is fairly conservative in outlook in cliche in line, but the way it is framed still does some good by jarring white people to take another look at their assumptions and culture. At least, it did for me the first time I encountered it.]
5. Video: Little Big Man - today is a good day to die [via soltice. A robot driving a robot. Sort of. But it tempts me to have thoughts about things so it must be art.]
6. Australian government wants power to snoop work e-mail, IMs [via soltice. Oh, those insidious terrorists.]
7. Toon: A Few Reasons Why (We Need a Transgender Rights Bill) [via gentle_gamer. Interesting. Not ever seen this site before. The rest of her work on the site seems pretty neat too.]
8. Libraries in crisis? [via soltice. Refers to here. Not so great news for someone hoping to work there next year. I am not convinced the writer of the article knows what ey is talking about though.]
9. Toon: The Joys of Tax Time! [via gentle_gamer. If this keeps up, I may subscribe myself. Or this is good too.]
10. Burning Car [via gentle_gamer. First thought: bored. On further examination, fascinated by the moments which might be so captured and their preservation marking dramatically the stilled moments of time marking the shifting sources of these images.]
11. Yuri's Planet [via gentle_gamer. Thought I had starred this for possible desktop use. Apparently not. Fixed now.]

1. solticepazi_ashfeatherLeishmaniasis Parasites Evade Death By Exploiting Immune Response To Sand Fly Bites [Sometimes I wonder what immune systems do when they are not being subverted. Sometimes.]