A little bit about me

learning a new trick is always a difficult proposition. The new trick I am attempting to master this time is the use of dictation with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. It actually feels somewhat silly to sit and talk to your computer. Which is doubly so for me given that I was raised reading science fiction. Teaching this old dog new trick of using dictation software instead of typing is going to take a bit more practice than I had expected. I hope that at the end of this process dictation will prove faster than typing and I may yet get a few short stories into electronic ink.

Web Worker Daily was a lovely article on rescuing an unproductive day. I really have to thank them for reminding me to turn the music on. Drowning out the conversations from the cubes around the floor, and the noises of the toys the folks around here use to help adjust attitude when taking support calls is a godsend. Pandora really helps in providing the soundtrack I actually want to listen to. Setting up a channel for 80s bubble-gum pop music, or loud, stompy industrial, is great for fixing a broken day.

Stanislaw Lem is a brilliant author. This is the first book of stories about pilot (or cadet, in the first story) Pirx of the space service. We open with Pirx as a cadet, learning to fly the atomic rocket. This is almost identical to the rockets described by Charles Stross in his current science fiction stories, which is rather telling in terms of the perception of atomic fission as the source of energy for rockets in space. But I digress. Pirx is worried about his performance, and comparing himself to the best and brightest in his class. I know that I did that through highschool and college as well. But when Pirx emerges from the simulator that he thought was a real training flight he finds that his overthinking of things has led him to land while the bright boy crashed his simulator into the moor. Pirx is an everyman of a character who thinks too much, and analyzes too much. He is worried that his name will impact his ability to get a date. "I'm Pirx" doesn...

Charles Stross once again delivers a romping good read. Cramming in a good number of the current trendy terms and concepts from the singularist camp, Accelerando is a fast forward look at what might happen if the computers do take over. Uploading into the net, external mental components, ability to fork yourself into multiple versions, these are the wet dreams of the technorati. The cat as the family curse is a nice subplot, but does seem a bit Deus Ex Machine; the whole story being centered around the machines does tend to lend itself to those sorts of plot devices however. The idea of a robotic cat that is upgradable really is a nice extension of the Aibo and other products currently on the market. The idea put forth of a Matrioshka brain instead of a Dyson Sphere as the final outcome of a solar system that has uploaded itself is very compelling. Given the change from consuming all resources to support the human form, to consuming all resources to support the virtual worlds, ...

I keep forgetting how much having music in my life helps me. My creativity always seems to be a little higher when I have music playing in the background. I must say a thanks to a few friends who turned me on the www.pandora.com where I can build a radio station that plays my favorite hits without commercial interruption. Unfortunately most of the creativity is now going to get turned into doing a large project for work that suddenly became a top priority, but at least I am creating content of some form.

I'm afraid I have to beg procrastination in this case. Just too distracted by reading blogs to write in mine. The days are still way too short, and I am way too sleepy most of the time. I really had the best of intentions, which still amount to a rather empty journal compared the the loft goals of the new year.

self mating socks Okay, maybe not the best product name in the world, but what does an engineer know about naming products. We just call them like we see them. It all started one morning when my wife was complaining yet again about not being able to find an actual pair of socks. Naturally I offered to help, but the question "aren't these a pair?" was met with a snort and the look, clearly indicating that I couldn't tell that those two socks were not really identical. This ritual had been performed almost daily since we were married, but for some reason this morning it struck a nerve and I was determined to use technology to solve the problem once and for all. Socks that would find each other. Self mating socks. For several days I thought about socks and socks and socks. The first problem is that you buy more socks that just a single pair. So how would each pair know that they were not the same as the other two pairs from that bag. That and how to make what ever...