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These are two words that I never wanted to read next to each other. In my world of fragile technology strung together by bits of wire, IP addresses, and a few lines of code… I am completely vulnerable to the forces of nature.
All the tech support in the world can’t help you when the thing catches on fire and burns to a crisp.
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Failing hard disks are the bane of my existence. I recently dug through my PC junkyard and did a quick catalog of all the dead drives that I could not bare to throw out over the past decade.
27 Dead Hard Drives
I have lost hard drives in my…
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In my daily NPR listening I have taken in at least three stories on the emerging technology of FMRI, or Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. It is a mashup of technology and medicine in which doctors and scientists are able to effectively see what you are thinking. What’s more, is that after observing the visual response of someones brain for a little while, patterns emerge in which the observer “knows” what you are thinking.
In the past few stories on this technology the application and studies have usually been focused on helping doctors understand how drugs affect patterns in the brain and how people suffering from mental illnesses like schizophrenia may be helped. That is all well and good, but in each story the future application of this mind reading device is hinted to be lie detecting… and of course marketing… I think I am getting sick…
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Oh the great mass of wasted time, effort, thought, energy, and peace offered at the all consuming alter of customer satisfaction…
Make it look cool!
Bring me the hot stuff!
I am the customer and the customer is always right…
I would like a toaster with wings on it…
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I had the good fortune of watching two great movies this past week at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor. Visual Futurist and Blade Runner the directors cut.
Anyone who has seen Blade Runner knows it sets the standard for futuristic sci-fi noir. I didn’t realize that the genius behind the look of most every sci-fi movie I appreciate (Blade Runner, Tron, Aliens…) was the son of a preacher man from Detroit, Syd Mead.
He likes to draw… he’s good at it… and he knows it…
I was struck by his humility in light of his accomplishments, he still just draws… because he likes to. He likes a challenge. He wants his art to be approachable by people. It’s certainly creative, but it never intends to escape humanity.
Syd Mead’s work reminds you of something you have never seen before.
What an amazing gift to be able to give to people.
Read more to see a youtube preview of the documentary about his life.
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… some said it would be impossible, some scoffed at my resolve, but nevertheless here we are 30 days since the new years Halo gluttony fest and I have not played a single game. The Xbox’s are still in the house, controllers hooked up and all… but I am just refusing to play. It’s possible you know, self control. This is just the beginning folks, right now I am looking down the barrel of a year long rocket launcher of Halo abstinence and master chief has been taunted to…
Go Ahead, Make My Day.
I got better things to do, like…
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I love this organization. FIRST is everything I was looking for in an extracuricular activity when I was in highschool… but never really found it. The good news is that I can be involved now.
Here’s how it works… teams (usually by highschool) sign up for the yearly competition. The goal is to create a robot that will compete in the annual competitions in a variety of challenges. Its kind of like battle bots, but all nice and focusing on team work instead of destruction.
Anyone can join because there is room for just about every area of interest and talent on a team. For example, I am a mentor of the animation team… thats right… every team gets to create an animation along with their robot… and it is its own competition right along side the yearly robot challenges. Autodesk donates the software… and all the teams need are a few computers, some willing students, a little bit of direction, and a lot of rendering hours to churn out a fresh animation. I have been involved for the past 4 years…
Every team needs a bunch of mentors, if you think you would like to mentor an animation team… I started this website to try to organize our efforts in the Detroit area…
Here’s an original animation from my team, TNT280
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There was a time when every piece of technology and gadget caught my fancy. I still spend way too much time with tech stuff; whether it be video, computers, 3d, or the pda / phone… but they are all together unimpressive to me. It took open source ethics to open me up to the wonder of what could be done by a committed group of nerds and one collaborative project known as Joomla!
It’s amazing… cause it lets anyone build a wonderful website full of impressive features overnight… for free…
Check it out www.joomla.org
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I spend a fair amount of time every month speaking to telemarketers, whether I want to or not. About half of the time I try to come up with some clever way to have fun with them, as long as they are human… robocalls are the worst. Sometimes I will sing a song for them, or try on a new accent, but usually I just try to respond with a ridiculous situation or stipulation for signing up with whatever they got. If they are peddling mortgage financing… I will tell them that I want to buy my own island and it costs 500 million dollars and I will not refinance my home unless they give me at least 500 million.
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