Vitanuova for 2002 May 5

General

LawMeme pointed me at another blog called Copyfight: IP Law, Politics and Technology on the Net.

I visited Michelle in Berkeley and played Dance Dance Revolution again.

I looked around for information on electroluminescent wire (also called EL wire, cool neon, or cold neon). This is a neat flexible wire which glows brightly under a high voltage (but extremely low current) AC (low enough power that you can drive an inverter directly from a 9V battery, or even a smaller battery). I've never yet used EL wire, but I've read about a few projects which made use of it, and I might be using some in graduation cap projects this spring.

Holidays

Happy Cinco de Mayo, Orthodox Easter, and happy birthday to Kate.

Veblen

One of several remarkable observations:

[...] and it is this same joint stock of technology that gives to the modern world's tangible assets whatever use and value they have. Tangible assets, considered simply as material objects, are inert, transient and trivial, compared with the abiding efficiency of that living structure of technology that has created them and continues to turn them to account.

(Thorstein Veblen, Absentee Ownership: The Case of America, p. 65)