Interesting stuff

My stuff

[anythingiwannaput]

Layman argument and reliance upon authority spiraling out of layman knowledge

Whenever I watch a debate online what I see often is two experts go back and forth in an intelligible and reasonable fashion that non-experts can understand. Then at some point the debate takes turn towards the technical. Issues are usually complex and require depth and thorough thinking. However we go outside non-expert knowledge at this point and so does the debate. Non-experts who were initially able to follow along get left behind.  It is as though there are debates for layman and debates for experts. Its import to keep it simple, otherwise the masses gain new knowledge...

Keep it simple and don't rely on technicalities to win over your audience. 

[anythingiwannaput]

Helping me be in control of my brain

So I've come across this great site that gives current research on how to get shit done. It talks about behavioral research studies that help us get leverage over ourselves to get tough stuff done...

http://www.sparringmind.com

[anythingiwannaput]

Getting Quietnet to work

I found out about Quietnet from boingboing.net. Quietnet is simple python coding that allows you to communicate between computers via ultra-sonic sounds. All you need is python, speakers, and a microphone- something most laptops come equipped with. Get the Quietnet code zipfile from github here:  https://github.com/Katee/quietnet

I had some issues getting it started, so I'm posting my experience to finally get it working.

Setup:

As it turns out it appears that Quietnet was coded in python 2.7 so I re-downloaded that here using the 32-bit version that is compatible with the rest of the modules I found:  http://www.python.org/getit/    This installation had to be done for - Just for me - and not for 'all users' which allows the python to be seen by the Windows registry...

Next I installed the necessary dependencies for Quietnet: pyaudio and numpy which are modules that are needed in python for it to work. I didn't get these files directly from the programmers, but got the binaries from an educational website that makes installation much easier:  http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/

Make sure you download the 32-bit versions of the modules for python 2.7.

Once the modules are installed you can open up Python Idle to make sure they are running properly, do this by typing:  help ('numpy')     and: help ('pyaudio')      You should see a bunch of info. without any errors and should see the version number at the bottom.

Almost done. Next open up the file send.py downloaded from github on  computer using python. You'll get the > prompt. In another computer run the listen.py file. Make sure you volumes are up all the way.

So this should get you started, but its finicky using the 19100 Hertz for me. I had better results using 5000 Hertz. You can mess with the frequencies and other options in the option.py file.