May 2005 - Posts
may 2001: James Hogan, Chris, gregg getting hammeredjames hogan normally posts fairly regularly to his web site, but when i checked the rss feed 
i noticed that there's an ongoing gap. having learned of jack chalker's recent death, and kind of being spooked by the scifi connection, i thought i'd better try and check up on ol' jph, via the web, anyway.
didn't really find anything, but i did come across a piece he did for a “fanzine” a couple years back, so i figured it was time again to borrow a “guest” speaker for the blog:
“…Their analysis, in impeccable organization-speak and with a facility for categorization, delineation, and sub-classification that would have delighted denizens of Washington bureaucracies or those masters of desiccation whose tomes line the bookshelves of humanities departments, reduced all of the diversity, richness, triumph, tragedy, and magnificent chaos of human culture to three societal types. These, in a breathtaking imaginative leap, were designated "Type A," "Type B," and "Type C."…”
worth a read. meanwhile, i hope everything is well with jph.
counting trophies
a nice impromptu visit, kind of stream-of-silliness. you know, they never touched the ice cream, and somehow it got left here. i guess it's up to me, then ;-)
1 seems to be only one outfitter on the river based on a web search, but i don't know for sure if that's the case, or if this is the outfitter they used.
“Writer's block is your friend. It's your unconscious mind telling you that what you just wrote or are about to write is wrong—you don't believe in it or care about it, and so you can't stand the thought of writing it. Go back and reinvent the story, which may involve throwing out everything you've written up to now.”
that's interesting. “determine your true intentions and desires through observation of your own behavior”. life has “blocks” as well. is the remedy also similar ?
what is it we do effortlessly ? from an attitudinal perspective, i mean, not the actual expenditure of energy.
i scare myself this way. perhaps stopping to think is the most dangerous thing a person can do. “know thyself” - ha! screw that - go live! it's too late for me, go save your selves.
more 'net info bites the dust: now you have to register to peek at the imdb message boards. not that it's a huge loss, since the quality of much of that content was low, and the registration is free, but still, more locking down of data going on. and i did find it useful and sometimes entertaining to read more about some shows. the fans seem to have a better grasp on cancellation facts, for instance.
while i'm on the tv topic, man, is it a wasteland now. i'm thinking we should all mail our sets to to the various networks, etc. you think several million 25 inchers showing up on their doorsteps would make a difference ?
yeah, even when i drop off the face of the earth, no one seems to notice ;-) ok, just a note to track what's been up, and what's coming up:
- i spent most of the last two weeks reading and working through the exercises in Advanced Calculus : A Differential Forms Approach. not done yet, of course. very interesting subject matter and presentation which was lacking in my background. mostly the differential forms perspective, which is exactly why i bought the book in the first place. it's also been interesting to use mathematica in working out problems and visualizing things. working on one thing tends to elucidate the other. it's also been interesting to ponder the meaning of “solution” in this context: which patterns are most important, the math, or the meta-math ? in some sense, “non-evaluative” pattern solutions (notation manipulation) preserve more information than traditional evaluative approaches. yet, you can look back on the transformation path and the same information is present in a different form. back to the idea of “does this concept space contain the solution to this problem space” (eg, does mathematics contain the solution to a particular physical problem). in a sense, existence is the solution, with or without construction. then of course, can a system contain its own solution in abbreviated form, even if the concept space admits a solution. at one point i flashed on the connection between all these things and cellular automata and fractals and “chaos”, etc.; i can see where wolfram is coming from with his “new kind of science” 1, even having never read it. unfortunately, i can't recall the exact thoughts right now, but i seem to remember thinking he could very well be right. anyway, you can tell i've been having fun with this ;-)
- other than that, i've also been slowly trying to get used to a work-world mentality, in pursuing a particular technology / solution / business space. i had an idea a few years back that sharepoint portal server could be a very lucrative niche business practice, but the market sure wasn't ready for it, even though job opportunities trickled in from around the country in this area. a couple years ago i began pursuing it a little bit more, but then lost interest after a few weeks. i've always been interested in higher level framework solutions using rich-plumbing middleware, and have kept tabs on the evolution of this particular solution space almost from the beginning. it's even hard to remember all the fuzzy details of the lineage of the current systems now, but i played with all of them at one time or another. my real stopper was that i wasn't going to handle the actual business end of things. silly me. and, well, i was doing other things ;-) but now there is a possibility of some sort of informal partnership, and with that prospect at hand, it makes sense to start picking up the threads i dropped a couple years ago. that is the current and near-future effort, and will take up substantial time.
- not much in other news. i've successfully tried to suppress my blogging urge a bit, letting much in the news and personal items pass by. i guess i'm kind of mulling over content and approach, etc., given recent musings.
- in more concrete personal news, my sister-in-law and niece may be stopping by here tomorrow night on their way to join their school group at mammoth caves. they need to leave late and so may need a place to crash for a few hours. yep, that's me, a rest stop. and a dirty one at that ;-)
1 it appears necessary here to mention that wolfram's stuff is a rehash and summary of others'. but i don't know if that should discredit the content any. trivial ? it seems so to me at the moment. but for a flash there, i think i “got it”.
[noise] * eh ? what's that ? wind, i guess.
[more noise, things dropping] oh, dang, a critter probably got in through the back porch screen. (i keep the door open) better go check...
[looking for furry critter in the floor region as something swoops by my head] whoa - a wren ! two wrens ! oh bugger...
[chasing around in circles] cut it out, i'm trying to help you, stupid ! ok, maybe i'll open the front door [one bird exits, the other finds its way off the porch]
[much wren warbling between trees in the front & back. i guess they've got a story to tell too.]
(yeah, the door is still open)
this one caught my eye:
Microsoft tries to breathe life into older PCs
TODAY'S TOP STORY
Microsoft is developing a new version of Windows, called "Eiger," that's targeted at customers who have older PCs but can't afford to upgrade their hardware. Eiger turns older PCs into a thin client that can run a few programs locally, including IE, Windows Media Player, and antivirus software.
so i ask again, don't we have enough already ? and instead of a repackaged terminal server client, why not offer “windows classic” ? there is really a stable useful set of functionality that hasn't changed and is not affected by improvements in hardware and software. and this set probably represents 80-90% of actual usage rates. what is all this extra crap that's living in my computer ? and why do i have to change it all the time ?
a curse on henry ford. after mass production came the question “now what?”. features, that's what. options. new models. gratuitous changes. sure, there have been real improvements in some areas, and improvements in others are still going strong. but to get there, it seems the powers-that-be have decided that we need to keep chipping into the $$$ Corporate Entity Survival Fund ™ ® © $$$.
the global economy is driven by this nonsense. which is weird because apparently enough residual real value is created to support other endeavors. one might think that we could get even better results by funneling all those wasted resources into things of true value. but our creativity doesn't work that way.
nor does the marketing. for example, look at mass media - films, television, music, newspapers, and even books. they've so well managed to convince us that the same old shit is really something new that we're willing to pay for it over and over and over... but the reality is that these industries are effectively moribund; it is only our illusions of them that exhibit any sort of dynamics.
everywhere, there is scale-free self-similar infinite regress into our own navels. or even darker holes.
what about working out a steady state economics for certain sectors ? and even for contraction, versus expansion. we can “choose” our growth patterns. in some sense a return to the rates of change always existing before the current era would make a lot of sense, reserving purposeful use of resources towards 'noble' aims, all of which are just coming within our reach. cures, exploration, elimination of poverty and other human ills. in exchange for the next few generations of flat screen tv, or oversized underused homes. truly intentional living, fully aware of the possibilities, dangers and responsibilities.
the 'current' (decades to few century) state of affairs is not sustainable. nor are 'singularities' realizable. this is a transient period with apparent pseudo-growth. as the flows sort themsleves out, sure, there are some real short-term benefits to many (but not most) people. but as the phase transition completes (and there is evidence this is already underway), something much darker will take its place. unless we insist on the culturally mature path.
i don't see any signs of that. do you ?
i was thinking about the balance of post types here in terms of the categories that i've assigned them to:
post category distribution
- there's more “dear diary” than i thought, which is ok; that's one of tha main purposes of journal-blogs, which this is.
- i think there's way too much “politics”, but it overlaps a number of other things, so maybe it's ok, just need to tone it down a bit ;-)
- i thought there was more “travels”, but then i'm thinking of the length of posts too.
- hmm, that would be another measure: not just count, but length of content as well. i think i'll do that one next.
- i could also consider the number of hits per item as another weighting item. content-size vs. category vs. hits. i think i know how that would work out ;-) but the hit information has various inaccuracies.
categories over time [# posts]
- trend-wise, i can see the “politics” lump around november, so maybe i'm ok there after all. but what was going on in february ?
- along with “politics” there was a lot of “humor“. figures.
- the “dear diary” stuff is on a swing upward. hmm.
- the rest is somewhat consistent, with reasonable ebbs and flows.
- of course, there's even more options in analyzing the data here than with the aggregate pie above, in addition to the weightings already mentioned. i kinda like the idea of “percent of running total to date”. that's the chart that the pie above would be a snapshot of. then again, that doesn't provide the information on rates of change that i'm after. see what i mean about options ?
i assign things to categories not merely because of overt content, but also because of my awareness of the connotations implicit in the various categories in terms of relative emotional content, subjectivity/objectivity (rant quotient), speculative vs. factual basis, audience differences, and so on. so, for example, something in “flags” or “politics” expresses my awareness of potential controversy, and that i've tried to consider such things while composing my thoughts. that seems to be a subtlety that is missed sometimes. i'm not expressing this very well here; probably worth a post or more of its own.
the walls are closing in:
USA Today |
Trend: You smoke? You're fired!
USA Today - 13 hours ago
... Those who smoke may be suspended or fired. About 20 employees have quit smoking under the policy, and a handful were fired after they opted out of the testing. ...
|
need i describe concerns about a “nanny state” ? the extension of such concerns into any area of our lives (skipped a workout? you're fired!) ? the problem with coporate extra-governmental fiefdoms (proxy govenrnments bypassing civil rights) ? the importance of risk pooling in fighting anti-selection ? and don't think this is separate from all the “national security” issues, and “public” bans of various sorts, and .... .
quit “protecting” me, dammit !
ongoing dilemma, still hitting the news today:
Mars rover Opportunity has wheel trouble
New Scientist (subscription), UK - Apr 19, 2005
The Mars rover Opportunity has lost the ability to steer one of its ... The rover has six wheels aligned in two rows and ... which can still roll but is now stuck at a ...
surely, related incidents.
ok, some of the wags are joking about calling aaa, etc. but you know, that's a good point: every other risky undertaking is performed with buddies or teams, with good reason. so why are we sending out solitary missions ? for less than double the cost (the overhead of launch is shared, unless you make that redundant as well), you can more than double your probability of success.
the spirit / opportunity pair is a sort-of redundancy, being completely independent missions. but that misses the point of buddies / teams: assistance. that modifies the probabilities in a nonlinear way, improving each individual success due to interdependencies. there are also shared dangers as well, so to gain the best of both worlds, you need two or more independent teams of two or more interdependent members. three is usually seen as a good number for this, for all kinds of reasons.
nine rovers (three teams of three) ? well, say 'opportunity' was a team - a distributed robot, if you will (duh, no kidding - the “swarm” concept that's needed for so much). one member gets stuck. not a problem - options: abandon it, relying on the remaining members to continue; rescue it using various methods (hey, mountaineers rope off - why not use retractable umbilicals ?); self-rescue (multi-modal movement - no built in jack ? grapple and winch ? hop, stretch, body roll, spin, anything in addition to “roll” ?). a trio of roped robots (physical connection; may as well include power and data channels as well, wired and wreless) can use some interesting techniques for rescue.
yeah, expense. to leverage the overhead of teams even more (we've already leveraged the launch overhead), missions could be much more ambitious in terms of goals and duration, etc. and it would be worth it, because the net return vs. risk is so much better than the simple linear model we are using now. but that assumes we can cross the “pain” threshhold of the up-front investment for such things. alas, we are not there yet. false economies, eh ? and skewed values.
opportunity is knocking. but no one is there to listen.
update (2005.06.08): A Mars Rover’s Great Escape
i think i've got eight emails with various virii/worms over the last few days. is this a spring thing ? do bugs mate in the fall and give birth in the spring ?
i also notice that all the email providers have caught them in one way or the other before they arrived. aol was kind of weak in this regard, they just tagged it as “spam”, with the payload still intact. i tried to save it to disk to edit it, and nav just dinged it right away. these things are fun to reverse engineer, but i really shouldn'y be doing it on my main box anyway.
roadrunner removed the payload unilaterally, while one forwarding service “quarantined” it on their server, awaiting a user decision to delete or receive.
the mail headers aren't too informative. to me it looks as if someone (or some process) at these various services were the ones infected, not one of their customers. but since it creates its own smtp server, it may well be spoofing other stuff as well. i would ;-)
5/5/2005 3:03:51 PM []
Now assigned to: []
Group now assigned to: []
Priority now: Medium
5/5/2005 3:05:22 PM []
User says nothing is happening when he turns on his laptop while in a docking station. The user took the laptop out of the docking station and states nothing happens when he turns on the laptop, no lights, no beeps, and no sounds.
The user took out and rubbed the battery. He replaced the battery and now he can start up the laptop
The user is requesting someone rub his laptop and possibly rub the battery
Dell D600 Latitude
s/n : []
Please assist the user.
omphalos - now
there's a word ! ;-) wikipedia articles:
fractal navel. see also
mandala,
chakra
... i just froze my lower lip to my (
very) frosted beer mug. solution: just keep drinking ! ;-)
well, maybe not quite that ultimate. that would be the implantable holographic blah blah blah thing.
no, i'm just looking for something with [google search] “phone pda gps wifi camera bluetooth satellite video broadband windows”. that search gets over 100k hits. basically i'm just hitting all the buzzword pages. but, except for maybe the sat phone (voice & data) part, i'm pretty sure there are devices out there that fit the bill.
as for form factor, there are good reasons for everything from phone size to palm / pda to tablet. a pda seems a nice compromise, as long as various bluetooth peripherals are available. i'm thinking personal-area-network here. also, all the capabilities need to be built-in; i don't want to have to play mega-man or what-have you, swapping cards in and out to get what i want done, but not being able to do it all simultaneously.
and really nice would be a sports/recreation shock/water proof capability, with additional sensors for temp, pressure, depth?, etc. ooh, now i am dreaming !
ok, what else am i missing in the feature wish list ?
anyway, what brought this on is my old phone's battery dying. i stopped at a store yesterday, and a new battery is $50. if you can find one; the phone's pretty old by such standards. now, i could get a nice new phone for that amount - along with another two year commitment. but to stay with my current carrier and kep my phone number, i can't take advantage of some of the rebates and service plan improvements - ! what a world. so that means i need to consider other carriers as well, and i figured i may as well look in the wider mobile device market too.
so, any suggestions ? there's a huge number of choices. i thought that perhaps requiring all the bells & whistles would narrow it down, but the snr sucks.
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