In Defense of Starship

Rolling Stone recently released a list of the ten worst hits of the 80s, and, once again, “We Built this City” took the top spot.

This annoys me.

Not because it’s the best song ever – it’s a fluffy little Pop tune, c’mon – but because it’s just another rehash of a 2004 list that defunct Blender Magazine threw together with no real criteria. It basically amounted to an editor asking folks “What songs annoy you?”, and then sorting the list based on how much he agreed with the answers.

A fun thing to do is to go through someone’s iPod and try and figure out what songs are on there ironically (unless it’s a Hipster’s mix tape, then they all are). I have “We Built this City” on my player, and it’s not ironic at all. I like the thing. It’s the typical lament of teenagers about being misunderstood and marginalized by the older generations, set to a catchy rhythm. To me, the whole thing is a complaint that the creative energy that fuels the younger generations is also the source of the innovation and advancement which “built this city”, but that it has been co-opted and exploited by the more conservative, faceless corporate community. And I think that no line – in this or any other song – better illustrates that than:

“Marconi plays the mambo”

I remember when I first heard the song; I was absolutely stunned by that implications of that line. That this 21-year-old Italian kid created a revolutionary, world-changing technology – just so he could dance.

I was fifteen, smack in the middle of my formative years, and that idea sparked a lifelong fascination with the intersection of Pop Culture and technology. I chased down bands that were integrating electronics into their styles (very easy to find in the 80s), sought out cutting edge fiction (leading to Cyberpunk, naturally), and read magazines like MONDO 2000 (when I could find them). Now, sites like Acceler8or, ThinkGeek, BoingBoing, and Wired are the windows through which we can watch the integration of technology and humanity. The question is: Are we, as people, becoming more machinelike? Or is the tech becoming more organic?

Both.

Scientists are even now experimenting with a fungus that changes colors as the basis of a memory-storage system, and thousands upon thousands of people are walking around with pacemakers or artificial limbs. I refer to my smart phone as my external brain – and I’m only half-kidding. You can get your pets (or your kids!) chipped so you can GPS them if they get lost, and Japan has built robots that acquire knowledge like children, learning from mistakes. Then there's this bit from today: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11283/1181062-53.stm

Conventional wisdom holds that porn is the driving force behind all technological leaps. As a species, we really like it, and are constantly looking for ways to deliver it faster and more realistically. The first fully-functional neural net/Waldo suit will be a sex toy, delivering perfect partners in perfect environments with perfect results every time.

The second one will be for dancing.

Prep School

Well hello, world; long time no blog. I wish I could say I’ve been ignoring you because I’ve been doing all kinds of fantastically cool stuff, but that’d be a lie. If I had been doing all kinds of fantastically cool stuff, the blog wouldn’t have lay (laid? lain? fuck it) fallow lo these many months.

I am, however, doing some moderately neat stuff, so may as well share.

Everybody has their thing; that certain something that just trips their trigger. For me, it’s camping gadgets. If you’ve read my stuff before, you know I like thinking about survival situations. Psychologists would say that it’s a reaction to the somewhat adverse situation I am now in, but they’d be wrong. I’ve been fascinated by tiny useful things ever since I saw my first combination salt & pepper shaker in the Boy Scout section of my local Sears.

Oh yeah…I was a Scout. I took the “Be Prepared” motto to heart. I carry a Swiss Army knife, and have used it for something every day since I got it, no exaggeration. I like reading blogs, sites, and Instructables concerning gear and prep supplies, and I’m constantly tinkering with my kits. Hence, today’s blog.

September is National Preparedness Month, and I’m in the process of putting together the Winter supplies to supplement the usual kit I keep in the car. I’m also going camping in October, so I had to start gathering stuff for that. I found that I was duplicating items with each group I created, making them all bulkier than they needed to be. Redundancy is all well and good, but you don’t really need five knives. At least, that’s what I have to keep telling myself.

So I sat down and really gave some thought as to what survival-type situations we were likely to encounter, and to what severity. Our main threat is a power outage brought on by severe weather. Secondly, a stuck car – whether by weather or accident. A distant third is my getting lost on a day hike, and fourth is being in a public or business setting and need some quick repair.

Once I had these identified, I listed the supplies I would want for each situation, then categorized them as essential or as nice-to-have-if-it-fits. I leaned heavily on the Rule of Threes and the Ten Essentials, plus guides such as FEMA’s Emergency Kit Checklist. Once those lists were complete, I removed duplicate items, keeping them on the lowest tier I could (more on the tiers below).

With my lists in hand, I began assembling kits. I conceptualized them as part of a tier system, where the smallest kit fit into the next larger, which fit into the next larger, etc. The somewhat crappy photos below illustrate this concept.

So, first tier, the Urban Survival Kit. Small enough to fit into a suit coat pocket, with those odds and ends useful for temporary repairs to prevent permanent embarrassment.

In this kit, I have (left to right): rubber bands and two sizes of cord, matches, post-its and pencil, sewing kit, a pouch with single doses of common OTC medications, safety pins and buttons, sticks for collar stays or splints, toothpicks, nail clippers, several sizes of band-aids, and alcohol wipes. In the unlikely event this was the only kit available to me in an emergency, I could use the safety pins and cord as a fishing rig, light a fire using the alcohol wipes and toothpicks as tinder, and cook in the Altoids tin. Ridiculous? Sure. But I wouldn’t just give up, either.

The next kit I consider a bare-minimum “crap-I’m-going-to-have-to-spend-the-night-out-here” kit.

Here’s the case:

Here’s everything in it:

That may be a little hard to make out, so here’s the breakdown:

Leatherman multi-tool with bit-driver and precision screwdrivers.

Light carabiner, snaplock ring, 12” airplane cable keyring, small measuring tape.

Thermal blanket.

My favorite ring o’ gear: 6” airplane cable ring, mini LED light, tweezers, P-51 can opener, mini pry bar, magnesium fire striker, pocket scalpel, pocket saw, pea-less rescue whistle.

Flexible key ring, magnifying glass, knife sharpener, signal mirror, OTC meds & sucrose tablets, compass.

The Altoids tin from above fits in the front pocket with the compass and mirror.

And that case can, in turn, be tossed into:

which contains:

No individual pics on this one, so, from left to right:

Tarp, work gloves, towel, poncho, LED flashlight, change of clothes, tent stakes, rope, food pouch with tuna, breakfast mix, hot chocolate, oatmeal and a few other odds and ends, emergency candles, canteen, cook kit with spork, various plastic bags, Velcro strips, crank-powered flashlight, Boy Scout handbook for reference, bag of dryer lint for tinder, pack of cards, pencils and notecards (one pencil has several yards of duct tape wrapped around it). Not shown is the first aid kit and cleanup supplies that stay in the car full-time, which will also fit in the bag if they need to be carried out.

The tier beyond this one includes all of the standard camping gear – tents, gas cookers, sleeping bags, etc – which we could either use inside if we lost power, or throw in the car if we had to evacuate. I’m in the process of making personal backpack kits for each of the pride, so everyone has what they need for a few days, and we won’t have to worry about forgetting anything if we have to boogie out fast.

So there we are. I like being prepared and having cool gadgets. Obviously, I hope I’m carrying all this stuff around for no reason, but it’s one less thing we have to worry about in case something does happen. At the very least, it keeps me in the garage and out of Mrs. Cat’s hair, and that’s good, too.

Talk Nerdy to Me

I love technology.

Yesterday I went through my vast music collection, comprised of songs I'd pulled from Napster or other torrents, copied from YouTube using a freeware program called Audacity, downloaded from friends' iPods, and ripped from CDs I purchased from various online retailers. I dumped all the songs I wanted onto a 1" long thumb drive that has sixty-four times the storage capacity of my first desktop.

Today, I placed a micro SD card into an adapter sleeve and inserted the rig into a reader connected to my work computer through one of six free USB ports. I transferred all the song files from the flash drive onto the card. I now have eight hours of music taking up only 1/16th of the storage space on a card that's smaller than my pinky nail. The card went into my cell phone, thus obviating the need for a separate mp3 player.

What I really geek out about in all of this is the fact that it's no big deal. Everybody is familiar with this sort of file exchanging, and everyone expects storage capacity to at least double every year. My phone is smarter and more powerful than the computers that put men on the moon, and I consider it a cheapie not-quite-a-throwaway-but-close.

I can't wait to buy a terabyte thumb drive.

The Atomic Shuffle

One of the big geek fantasies is teleportation. Invariably, whenever the subject comes up, the discussion turns to the revolution it would be for the shipping industry – instant delivery, no transportation overhead, reduction in storage space, etc. Then the focus turns to the personal travel possibilities, where you can dispense with long plane/car trips to get to that business meeting or head down to Disney World. It always follows this pattern because even in our flights of fancy, we want to test it on non-living matter before we start hurling people between dimensions.

Like a lot of nerds, I’ve thought about possible applications for commercial teleportation: pizza delivery, Amazon orders, landfill removal, the collapse of the Hotel and Airline industries, etc. But very few people talk about how it will change some of the more questionable ventures, like crime, porn and spam mail.

For instance:

Prostitution will get a lot more discreet if you can beam them straight to the bedroom.
Your local crack dealer won’t draw attention to himself by having cars coming and going all day.
Pop-Ins will replace pop-ups as alternative medicine samples, Nigerian checks, and suspect software will be physically sent to you.
Nuclear bombs transported to any location just as the countdown clicks to 0.
Kidnapping and burglary will get a whole lot easier.

And on the punishment side of the “Crime &” equation:

Run from the cops? Instead of giving chase, they’ll zap you directly into the jailhouse.
Illegal alien? One word: teledeported. (Of course, they’ll pop right back in, but I had to use that.)
The SWAT team appears directly at the scene, grabs the bad guy and disappears.
Prisons won’t need doors in the outer walls.
Capital sentences will be carried out by setting the destination coordinates to “The Sun.”

And that’s not even touching on the massive changes in social etiquette that will take place when anyone can be anywhere at a moment’s notice. You think it’s annoying now when someone you’re talking to answers their cell phone? What about when they just pop out in the middle of a conver

Geeks bearing gifts.

Mrs. Cat, being all girly and stuff, gets a number of frou-frou catalogs for things like Bath & Body elixirs and potions, pretty stationery sets, and various clothing and collectibles. She got one recently from a company that offers Victorian reproductions of all of the above, and whiled away an hour or so sitting on the couch, marking those items she’d like to have at such a time as I start treating her in the style to which she’d like to become accustomed.

I picked up the catalog earlier today to sneak a peek at the things she’d noted, thinking that maybe I’d find something with which to surprise her for our upcoming anniversary. I was browsing through it, looking for her distinctive check-marks, and kind of keeping a mental inventory of the types of things she’d picked out.

The Victorian poison ring was checked twice, so this may be the last anniversary I have to worry about it.

In amongst the furnishings and decorative pieces was a table clock. It was done in a sort of caryatid style, where the female figure was holding up the clockworks. It was labeled “Cassandra’s Clock,” which tickled me, because I could picture someone looking at it and commenting “I can’t believe the time!” I can just see the blurb on the ads for it, too:

“Perfectly accurate!”

I shared these observations with a friend who is just as much a Classical reference nerd as I am, and he pointed out that while useful, the Cassandra clock would only be able to be consulted once, and then you’d be compelled to destroy it.

So I’m not getting her that. Seems like a waste of money.

Font Snobbery

My last couple of projects were as concerned with Graphic Design as they were with copywriting, so I’ve been studying up on typography in general, and the underlying logic of font choice in particular.

I’ve complained before about the overwhelming use of Papyrus, and I’ve found I’m not alone in that.
http://esotericappeal.typepad.com/papyrus/

Today, I ran across an article about the creator of Comic Sans, who wishes people would just stop. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123992364819927171.html

Then there’s the growing backlash against Trajan.




No matter which font you mention, it will have its lovers and haters, but I think most people that bother to have an informed opinion will agree that it’s the indiscriminate use of a particular font that gets under their skin. There are thousands of fonts out there, and no need to use the same one for everything. Jokerman may tickle you personally, but you don’t send out your company newsletter in it. Similarly, putting large blocks of text in Blackadder ITC should be a capital offense.

If you can’t explain exactly why a certain font (or combination of fonts) should be used, don’t just randomly grab a “cute” font from Word’s menu; stick with the basics. A sans serif for short blocks of text or headlines, a serif for large blocks of text, a monospace if you’re programming or doing a lot of column work.

You can be as avant-garde as you want in your personal notebook, but if you send an e-mail in LINES,

you will end up on the “blocked senders” list.

And here’s something else I wish I’d made:
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1823766

Keep Me in Mind

I’m reading a very interesting book called The Overflowing Brain. The author’s central premise is that our brains have remained relatively unchanged for 40,000 years, and his main question is “How does a Stone Age brain cope with the vast amounts of information in our digital world?”.

I haven’t finished the book, so I don’t yet know his answer to that question, but one part in particular jumped out at me.

Some background:

In the book The Tipping Point, the author, Malcolm Gladwell, studies “the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable,” and he states that it takes three kinds of people acting in concert: Connectors, who have “an extraordinary gift” for making friends; Mavens, who are information specialists; and Salesmen, charismatic people with powerful negotiation skills.

In the section on Connectors, he mentions that these people have very large social networks, usually numbering around 150 people. Gladwell further states that 150 is about the maximum number of people you can maintain deep social ties with (this is defined as people whose birthdays, interests, favorite movies, etc. you know and keep up with – not just knowing their names).

The reason this was called to mind is that in The Overflowing Brain, the author asks why the Cro-Magnon brain was so large, since they didn’t have the amount of information to deal with that modern man does. A theory was suggested that it was used for keeping track of social interactions. The study that was consequently carried out seemed to bear out this theory. It was discovered that the smaller the cortical area (the part we use for processing information and memory) in relation to the total size of the brain, the smaller the social circle maintained by the animal (in this case, primates). According to the chart generated by the research, modern man’s cortical area can support a social network of about 150 people.

I thought that was cool: Our brain size determines the number of close friends we keep.

So next time someone wants to send you a friend request on Facebook, tell them your brain is full.

Bubbles in the Brain

IQ; UQ; We all Q!

So I’m feeling a little bummed today. Y’see, I’m reading this book called Outliers, and one section discusses innate genius. The example is a man who blew the top out of the standard IQ test – he was literally off of their charts – and had to be given another one developed specifically to measure IQs above the range of the standard test. He got every question right except this one: Teeth is to Hen as Nest is to…?

Now, I knew the answer as soon as I read the question, and that’s what brung me low. Apparently I possess the knowledge to be able to answer esoteric questions built on obscure idioms, and the skills to sort and apply them, but this doesn’t translate into people beating down my door to hire me. (I’m not claiming that I would do as well on the rest of the test, by the way – pride goeth and all that; this just happened to be a question I could answer.)

***

Famous Cats in History

Saw this blog post today:

The Cat who started the Civil War

After General Nathanial Greene’s death, a young Yale University graduate, Eli Whitney, came to Savannah to take a tutoring job. Whitney began working for Greene’s widow, Catharine, and it was at Mulberry Grove that Whitney invented the cotton gin, the machine that revolutionized the production of cotton.

In fact, Whitney met Mrs. Greene on a ship from Rhode Island to Georgia when he was moving to take the teaching job and she was going to remarry. They struck up a friendship, and when he discovered that the pay for the teaching job was half what he had been promised, she offered to let him live at Mulberry Plantation while he decided what to do next.

At Mulberry Grove, much of the evening conversation was about the difficult economic situation plantation owners faced. At that point in US history, slavery was a dying enterprise. Slaves were expensive to keep and there was little profitable work for them to do. The market for local crops, indigo and rice would not support large plantations, and though growing cotton was a possibility, it was too expensive separating the cotton seeds from the fiber to make the crop profitable.

A few days later, Whitney was in the plantation barnyard watching a cat try to catch a chicken through a wire fence. Each time the cat would reach through the fence for the chicken, all he would bring back was a paw-full of feathers. This lit the bulb in Whitney’s imagination and he realized that folks were trying to solve the wrong problem with cotton. The solution wasn’t separating the seeds from the cotton fiber; it was separating the fibers from the seeds. He devised a screen-wire basket in which a roller with small picks would pull the fibers through the screen, leaving the seeds on the other side. This became his Cotton Engine, and it was an immediate success throughout the cotton-growing regions of the south. This drove a huge demand for field labor in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi and led to a great transfer of slaves from Virginia and the Carolinas, greatly upsetting slave families and leading to the upheaval that led to the Civil War some sixty years later.

Had Whitney not seen that cat, who knows what would have happened in American history? This is why a cat should be credited with starting the Civil War.

It was a cute post, but ignores the fact that slavery was not the underlying cause of the War of Northern Aggression.

***

From the Mailbag

(Whose robots would you rather have send you e-mail, Tyrell’s or Skynet’s? )

While I understand and appreciate the frustration people are feeling with their elected public serpents, sentences like this:

“We believe the Federal Reserve together with the above financial elites covertly manufactured the credit and real estate bubble to enhance continued foreign investment in their Treasury debt Ponzi scheme while generating obscene profits for Wall Street at the expense of the American people.”

encroach on tinfoil hat territory. The sheer number of people that would have had to be involved in this “scheme” ensures it wouldn’t remain secret. They have a legitimate gripe, though, since we’re all losing lots of money. Apparently, they are now too poor to even be able to afford commas.

It’s easy to dismiss them as goofballs, but they at least know their way around the amendment process, wanting to convene a National Convention to avoid the rigged system that is Congress. I wish them success in a spunky, underdog kind of way, but I was immediately reminded of this quote from Neal Stephenson’s novel, Interface:

“It was just a matter of time before some politician actually became stupid enough to mention forgiving the national debt.”

Click Here to Claim Your Prize!!!

A lot of couples argue about money, but how many argue about the formatting of the spreadsheet that tracks their budget? We’re such nerds.

***

A recent letter to the editor in our local paper has stirred up the incandescent vs CFL bulb argument. I’m trying to get people to look past their preferences and concentrate on the fact that the government is trying to mandate what kind of light bulbs we can buy.

***

You know those annoying flashing ads that pop up on the sides of web pages? Many of them seem to be political in nature. Not that they purport to affect anything in the political spectrum, but that they use current political events as a way to attract your attention. I noticed a couple of years ago that they also serve as a barometer of public opinion. The latest ad I saw asked “Do you regret voting for Obama?”. I thought that was interesting.

***

Let’s go to the mailbag!

An apparent resident of South Carolina, standing firm with the strength of conviction that can only be imparted by leaving anonymous comments on a personal blog, wrote in to offer their two cents’ worth on Sanford’s request.

“Charleston Mayor Joe Riley, Folly Beach Mayor Carl Beckmann Jr. and about 20 of the other mayors who signed a letter on its way to Sanford said that without the money, municipalities will be forced to make severe cuts in basic services. Not only will local services be curtailed, Riley said, but the state will lose prosecutors, State Law Enforcement Division agents and probation and parole officers — all of which will negatively impact public safety and quality of life.”

I’ve read the Mayors’ letter to the Governor. It’s more of the same blubbering about getting even more money from the taxpayers, with no concomitant plans to cut spending. My favorite line was when the Mayors helpfully noted that many states are creating “Stimulus Czars” to help allocate the funding. So I guess Obama was right when he said it would create jobs.

Just what we needed, more fucking bureaucrats.

Riddle Me This

I’ve never really gotten into the first-person shooter games, but I love a good puzzle. I think the Myst series is one of the best out there, and I’m hoping they’ll put out a full collection pack coded for today’s operating systems. The patches that are available usually cut out some pieces of the game to expedite play.

Lately, I’ve gotten into the Mystery Case Files series from Big Fish Games. These are primarily hidden object games, where you have to find certain items concealed in a larger picture. I really admire the way these games have evolved.

When they started out, it was all cartoon-ish artwork, with static pictures and a limited storyline. The next in the series added some simple puzzles that had to be solved before the next segment was unlocked – puzzles like a slider series or a jigsaw type. The edition after that introduced background movement like falling leaves or clouds passing across the sky, as well as bringing in really elaborate door-lock puzzles. Similar to the Myst series, no explanation is given on how these puzzles work; you just have to figure them out through contextual clues. This one was also a little darker than the previous versions.

The next game added more elaborate “in-between” challenges, and further developed the storyline from the last edition. Except for more detailed artwork and a much better soundtrack, it really wasn’t too far off from the very first one. It still relied on the player choosing destinations from a bird’s-eye view map, and still treated each destination separately, meaning that once you finished that section, you left it behind.

I just played the preview for the latest chapter, and was completely blown away by the new aspects. They’ve added live-action characters, for one thing. When that’s done well, it’s always fun. You don’t get to pick different destinations from a map any longer; rather, you play through more organically – revisiting prior destinations as needed. There’s an inventory function now, and certain items you find in the “hidden object” parts are saved for unlocking clues at later parts in the game. There are two feedback systems to help you in gameplay: a journal that keeps track of important clues when you uncover them, and a letterbox screen that lets you try different objects against the puzzle, giving you helpful comments like “Did you really think that would work?” The interface has been expanded, too. Now you aren’t limited to just clicking on things, but you can zoom in on whatever grabs your attention, as well as move in different directions.

Do I sound like a fanboy yet? That’s okay. It’s a fun way to spend a few rainy hours, and the designers set it up so that you don’t get the same list of objects each time, so it stays challenging longer than it otherwise would.

I hope they keep pushing their limits. I’d enjoy seeing them come up with a completely immersive world, where the player has total freedom of movement, and each object in the game can act against any other object. Of course, Mrs. Cat is fervently praying for the opposite, because I’d never leave the house.

Side-Effects

When people discuss being unemployed, they always talk about the cash crunch, the loss of insurance, the uncertainty. No one ever talks about the fact that there is now another person at home all day, and the disruption in the established domestic schedule it causes.

For instance, Mrs. Cat got used to being able to log on to the computer whenever she wanted to throughout the day, either to pursue her own interests or pull up educational sites for Kitten and Cub. Now, she’s got to find something to lure me away from the keyboard. She’s gotten really good at it, though. She’ll casually wonder aloud if there isn’t a better way to arrange the linen closet, or if the garage shelves are being optimized, and then sit back and wait for it to spur me to action. The sly minx.

There’s also a trade-off in communication. She likes having an adult around to converse with, as she was usually reduced to “A is for Apple”-type statements, and it was scrubbing points off of her IQ, but (and this will surprise no one who knows me) I can be…a tad…what you might call…sarcastic.

collective gasp

I know. Shocking, huh?

See, I got used to having thirty or so people around every day, which allowed me to spread out my ironic observations and mockery, leaving no single person to shoulder the load. As Kitten would need large doses of therapy if I jibed at her the way I did my coworkers, and Cub just ignores it, that leaves Mrs. Cat, who happily cuts me off at the knees if I push it too far. So I swallow a lot of sardonic retorts, which I’m sure will cause me to develop ulcers in the near-future.

Speaking of random transitions, our forecast is calling for thundersnow. I love this word so much. It sounds like some sort of D&D spell, combining a sonic and visual attack over a large Area of Effect, perfect for disrupting opposing forces, making an escape easier, or providing cover for a castle incursion. I always picture fluffy little flakes producing sonic booms as they hit the ground. It makes me want to roll up a Druid character and call the old group in for a game. That would be a little tricksy anymore, as we geeks defied the odds and got married and had families. Where we used to be able to devote entire weekends to gaming with little or no planning, now we have to coordinate schedules, get babysitters, find our spectacles, etc.

That’s the trade-off: We have the knowledge and experience that comes with age to create really spectacular campaigns, but are no longer able to plow through a 36-hour game fueled by nothing more than pizza and Pepsi.

sigh The side-effects of Life.