The word of the week is inchoate.
Jan 15 - Glowforge is Ready! But...
Last week, an email arrived I've waited YEARS
for:
My GlowForge is FINALLY ready to ship to me!
Except... I'm not quite ready for it.
Firstly, if I tell them to ship it now, it's just
going to sit at the holding depot in the USA, costing me money every week it
idles until my lady and I have to make the trip over to the USA to pick it up.
Since she's moving to her new place this coming month, it's just too much to
ask( she agrees )and we've no compelling reason to add to her stress.
Also, I've still got the website to complete, not
to mention the import papers, which are key: I've almost got things
figured out to where it will 'only' cost me a few hundred dollars at the
border, but rushing a pickup might cost me big time.
Lastly, there's the issue of insurance, which
maddeningly I've not been able to get a straight answer to from a few places
regarding a home business. I'm stepping up my efforts again this month, to see
what I'll have to pay to operate here safely.
Details, details... the devil's always in them.
But:
IT WILL BE THERE WHEN I'M READY - AT LAST!
Jan 16 – Goodbye, Dolores
Goddang it, not another gone...
Today we lost Dolores O'Riordan, of The
Cranberries, at the WAY-TOO-EFFING-YOUNG age of 46... only a few years
older than I, and a tragic loss.
I first heard Dolores when Linger hit
the air, shortly after I was done high school and deep into the magnificent
mess that was university. While I was introduced to a great deal of new music
in those years( par for the course )like Sarah McLachlan, only The
Cranberries stuck: I knew years later that it was because of Dolores.
This piece from The New Yorker eloquently
describes the impact that Dolores had on the world, and the legacy that she
leaves through her music that has touched millions. Below is my favourite song,
Dreams, which has held many meanings for me over the last twenty-five years...
and will likely bear more, as I listen to it again.
Jan 17 – AI Authors?
Sometimes the future can be...
frustrating.
Now, don't get me wrong: I love most
things to do with the future, as I'm usually an optimist and can see great
potential for humanity given our strengths... while hoping that our weaknesses
don't undercut us too much.
Such as shooting ourselves in the
foot when it comes to technology.
As many of you know, I'm a writer,
and I hope to be a published author sooner rather than later. Yet sometimes I
wonder about the future of the publishing industry( as do many people who
are currently in said industry... )when articles like this one pop up:
While I was initially discomfited by the
video, that gave way to some milder contemplation, as nowhere did the creators
of Quill mention HOW its writing capabilities work. For all we know,
what it turns out will be laughably pedantic and bland, suitable for travel
brochures and quick-burn website content only.
I doubt that we'll see AI Authors
turning out books on par with human authors anytime in the next few decades, at
least. Though I won't discount the low reading standards of the general public,
who seem to lap up films like Twilight and novels like Fifty Shades
Of Bleh...
Best I get my books out soon, eh?
Jan 18 – Street LEDs?
Sometimes change sneaks up on you.
While I was walking around the city this week
after dark, I noticed that some areas looked... different. At first I couldn't
put my finger on what was off, but then I realized it with a start: the shadows
were different!
It seems the city has been quietly
replacing their old HP-sodium-vapour streetlights with new high-power LED
lights, and as you can see from the image above, the change is startling. Gone
are the mushy outlines and vague shapes of shadowed objects: every line is now
sharp and clear, and the light has a spotlit-feel, as though you're on a sports
field... no more 'golden glow' to the streets, as this article laments about
the loss for the city of Los Angeles' film industry.
Change is sneaky, but the light's
gone on for me now...
Jan 19 – Almost-Awesome Animation
Dang it!
Why do I find out about the cool
stuff AFTER it's been cancelled?
As some of you know, I'm a fan of MWO(
MechWarrior Online )which is set in the BattleTech universe:
giant heavily-armed robot 'mechs' stomping around. Good times, and back in the
mid-1990's there was even an animated BattleTech series... which wasn't so
good, but at least they made it in the days before CGI.
Fast forward twenty-three years, and
someone had the bright idea to make a NEW series, based on the animations in
MWO but with cell-shading to appear 'animated' rather than pure-CGI: genius!
Unfortunately, the folks who owned
the rights to Battletech shut it down hard, and all we have left to see is an
'official animated advertisement' for MWO - sigh.
Just goes to show we can't have nice
things when lawyers are around, and when it comes to the BattleTech universe,
there's a LONG history of legal bickering.
Makes me want to climb into my
Catapult and zap things with lasers...
 |
| This is how I roll... er, walk. In MWO. |
Jan 20 – That Looks Like...
There was a time when I saw
spaceships everywhere.
Though that was when I was much
younger, just a boy, I still do on occasion: my creative muse points out
"Hey, that thingamajig looks like a space fighter!" or the like - and
it usually does. Just goes to show my imagination's always working.
While I went into the wordy side of
the arts, others with the same spaceship-gaze as I took a different path, and
it's served them well - take a gander at this guy's work:
 |
| Potato peeler and can opener? Not any more! |
I must admit it came in pretty handy
when playing as a kid, when anything could become a spaceship - and often did.
I was fortunate to have quite a toy supply to muck around with, and I
supplemented it with as many 'found' spaceships as I could...
What I'm saying, I guess, is: you can
never have too many spaceships!
Jan 21 – Happy 10th, io9!
Wow, has it been a decade already?
Two months after I moved to BC in
late 2007, I ran across a cool looking website with an odd name called
'io9.com' and I've been visiting regularly ever since.
io9.com is, for lack of better words,
a 'g33k mecca' where all the different threads of g33k culture were woven
together into a single website that collected news, articles of interest and
videos from all over the Internet into one place - sweet! Even better, they
fostered an amazing community, whose Comments sections never developed the
petty ping-pong of many other sites, thanks to vigilant mods.
I was able to satiate my hunger for
Star Wars news at the same place that I could find information on being an
author and check out what people were saying about the latest movie news. It
was a breath of fresh air in that it acted like a portal: I could be confident
in going there first to check things out rather than combing through the
scattered results from random Google searches.
As the video above shows, a lot of
love's gone into io9.com over the years, and it's stayed the course when many
other places like it have come and gone( looking at you, IGN... )which goes to
show its impressive attention to g33k culture.
Here's to another fantastic ten years!
All right: this last week was SOLID!
I swam twice in the morning before work, spent five FULL days at my desk(
seated AND standing )and I felt great going into the weekend... no tendon
aches, sore core or even a headache; yes! While I didn't end up being as productive
as I'd hoped over the weekend( I did a tech support visit to my parents )it was
a good one overall, and I feel balanced heading into my work-week. Normal Is
Good!
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