Captain’s Log

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Passing thoughts:

  1. Sometime this year, I’m liable to have 3,000 posts stored here.
  2. This totals all the journal entries when I used Livejournal, my migration to Blogger, and my return to it in the post-G+ life.
  3. I don’t think I want to know how many G+ posts are in my backup, but not here.
It does kind of perturb me that more than six years of my journal entries aren’t in the system. But at the same time, writing code to transbliterate my data dump into the a format Blogger supports, is not exactly convenient. But I probably should get around to it someday, ‘cuz Blogger’s export format is more widely accepted than G+’s.
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The more time passes, the more I would like to see our future reflected in Corning’s old A Day Made of Glass videos.

It’s less something I view as necessary, so much as one I view as progress. We have all this frakking technology, why not use it?

There’s nothing wrong with having my tablet or a laminated recipe handy when I’m baking something, but wouldn’t it be nicer to just ask for my favourite cornbread recipe, and have it pop up on a surface near where I am preparing stuff?

One of the things that have changed over the past decade is how I view the future. Once upon a time, my vision likely had more in common with early Star Trek or Alien. After all, I was born in an era where having a VCR was pretty damned awesome sauce :P. Today, I rather think of the future looking more like The Next Generation or Prometheus–with interactive displays everywhere. Networking is already gone from pervasive to ubiquitous in my lifetime; I doubt most people in the first world can even get from their bed to their job without > 1 microchips being involved along the way. Today, many folks will pass that mark by the time their morning alarm chimes.

Something that I really do love about Corning’s old videos: is the attention to interface. See, I imagine by the time I’m old as heck, we’ll probably have stuff that looks more like the Enterprise-D: which had bloody interactive touch screens literally all over the place. But real software doesn’t tend to look like LCARS, the way real equipment tended to look like Kirk’s ship. As a UI, I think a lot of what we’ve seen on Star Trek is pretty bad from a getting real work done perspective, and that’s alright: it wasn’t made to be an interface that people used ever single day to do every single thing we will ever do with a computer. It was made to be an inspiring, and effective on screen graphic. Plus let’s be honest, the Okudas did a lot of really amazing work.

Cornings video on the other hand is riddled with software experiences that are so close to what we have now, that it makes it more plausible, more accessible. Much like how the physical controls of Jefferies’ Enterprise were very believable when my mother watched Star Trek back in the ’60s. By contrast, I look at LCARs, and I see a pictures of what could be. I doubt we would envision the future so easily without Okuda’s work, it’s just the software will be very different.

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I find it a tad curious that my habits of journaling and note taking have only expanded with the rise of software.

For a time it was the norm to have composition books and more portable notepads around. Well into my teens, pencils at home were divided by preferences for writing and drawing. A planner/organizer for things more orderly and less notable.

And then there was my relationship with typewriters. I find it ironic and amusing that my keyboard tries to autocorrect that to torturers. Documents more read oriented called for typewriter action, but the tedium made it a rarity because of the error rate. Many years since I last touched a typewriter, I’m pretty sure that handing me correction tape or similar is a good way to piss me off.

Some years after discovering how awesome computers solved my pains with typewriters, laptops would eventually kill off my use for most things paper that involve the written word. But along the way, I’ve come to take increasingly more notes, and journal regularly. Part of this may owe to accumulating age, and necessity, but I feel it has more to do with the ease of editing and collecting data: since the 2000s, I find the sources and subject of things are far more computer related as well.

Also possible that I’m just kind of strange 😝

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Well, aiming for a larger breakfast, and skipping lunch might not have been a great plan, but on the upside, I’ve gotten most of my planned chores done. I’ve also gotten to spend time catching up on my anime backlog, hehe.

While I find dealing with the house work tends to be an intersection of time, and gumption, it definitely helps to keep a running list of sorts. Less so because of directed acyclic graphs, and having to deal with floors drying or surfaces you’d have to reclean. More so because it allows compressing them into an effective block, and being able to decide, “Yes, if I just spend fifteen minutes or an hour on this stuff, I’ll be nearly done”.

‘Cuz often the time required is shorter than people think. What makes it such a messy business is falling dreadfully behind, or trying to tackle very large areas. My approach to household chores is probably lax, since I don’t actually like to clean in my rest-periods, but I tend to make it focused time. That is to say, not clean the place top to bottomus but rather snipe specific areas and carpet bomb regions, where a little focus leads to a lot of done. Versus the frakk that’s gonna take all weekend, problem.

Plus it’s kind of a given fact, that I am both lazy and nerdy.

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Several times now in my life, people have found it curious when I’ve taken an easy going or kind attitude rather than being angry, or fuming about things. I too, sometimes find this curious.

Growing up, I can remember people’s anger reaching the point of destroying a room, leaving it trashed. One of my fond childhood memories includes a door being torn apart. My own realization as a youngster about needing to control my temper, left a hole in a closet door in the realizing.

It’s fair to say that I am the descendant of people known to have hot tempers, as well as for stubbornness. I certainly have both attributes, I just tend to manifest them differently. For one thing, I try to direct my anger where it is deserved, or warranted. Because I remember what people radiating anger can do. I also try to remember my grandfather’s outlook: try to be like a duck, and let it roll off your back. Ironically, he also had stomach ulcers.

Random neurons firing

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My habit of preferring the wall-facing side of the bed, and leaving the open side to the comfy dogs, remind me that I never tended to write much in bed.

Trying to update handwritten notes: the net result is not having enough room to starboard to move my arm: which impacts my legibility. I.e. having to micro-manage my finger muscles, both results in crappier writing and a more exhausting experience. Which also means my tablet will have a harder time converting my writings to more useful typed text.

This kind of got me thinking: about the days I used to keep physical notebooks and binders as my modus operandi rather than computers and things. And you know what the norm was back then? Typically, I’d be found on a step stool, in front of a tall dresser, because that was the only large work surface other than the floor. Plus that dresser was in my closet, owing to the lack of space we had, and offered easy access to additional storage.

By the time I really tended to update notes from bed, I had already reached the point of sleeping draped over a laptop and vaguely wondering how the screen stayed attached, lol.

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In some ways: it’s kind of fascinating how far our species has come, and how depressing how far we may have yet to go.

Dealing with Misty’s blister problem has made me think increasingly often about a scene from Star Trek 4: where Bones meets a patient waiting for kidney dialysis, and wonders if this is the dark ages–because it kind of is. And then they proceed to go rescue Chekov from having holes drilled in his skull by a crack team of ’80s brain surgeons.

We live in a world where science and reason has come a long way: yet much of our medical technology hasn’t evolved as significantly as our practical knowledge of medicine. We understand better how and why things work, but our influence is often limited.

In science fiction, such as aboard star ships named Enterprise: we see a world where what is broken can be repaired. Fixing broken bones is easier than welding metal. Bandaids and sutures replaced by repairing tissue and arteries. Tools that our chemists and biologists could only dream of for understanding the world around us.

Yet we live in a world where our only options are essentially medieval, compared to our dreams. We have to suture and staple people back together, because this is often the best our technology can do.

Hell, can you even imagine how much the equipment for an MRI costs, or how much it weighs, or how much our technology had to evolve to make that possible? From a pure technology standpoint such equipment is a miracle, a magical marvel. One we’ve only just begun.

I feel in many ways, we’re benefiting from the rise of science, and the ease at sharing collective knowledge. Our doctors know a lot more than in centuries past, and that’s a good thing. But the technology we’ve managed to develop for them? It’s far slower to evolve: tools and technologies take lifetimes to evolve.

On the other hand, in some ways the world we live in has been travelling like a rocket ship as marvelous technology is stacked upon marvelous technology, and knew knowledge refines our perceptions of the possible. When my grandparents were young, the concept of a transistor exceeded what we could construct. When my own parents were young, a long road made such things possible. As I sit here typing this, I can’t even fathom how many transistors were involved in making this journal entry. By the time I die, perhaps to a younger generation: the microchips of my computer will look like the capacitors and tubes in my great grandparents radio do to me.

It’s like, we managed to shoot man to the moon in a tin can using sticks and stones, compared to what our electronics have become since. Much as Apollo, surely would have been to Jules Verne, a lot of cool shit has happened since man took to the stars . But in many ways, our technology is still very primitive to what we can imagine.

Wouldn’t it be damned awesome, if we lived in a world where people created technologies that help man kind, far more than we spend writing buggy assed software? At least nerds can dream. Hmm, I wonder if androids would dream….

Captain’s log, stardate 2019.334

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Misc thoughts from the holiday.

Despite how depressing my life might appear to some outsiders, I’m actually pretty happy. Thankful for the good things in my life, and hopeful that they stay that way. As the old prayer goes, “Grant me dexterity for things I cannot kill, Crit for things I can, And enough points in wisdom to know the difference”

Making reuben sandwiches reminded me just how damned delicious a good sandwich is. Didn’t find any cuban or rye bread when I went shopping, so I grabbed a loaf of Texas Toast in the hopes that it would at least hold up to the frying. Experiments in eating leftovers make me think, getting this again might be a good plan. It’s thick enough that I can actually pack a sandwich well, the kind my momma would make; without being as cost and space ineffective as a hoggy roll.

I might be a terrible human being if I’m inclined to share my sandwich with the doggos, and then threaten them with hugs as the price of giving me a “Hey, where’s the follow up treats?”. Or just a weirdo.  Yeah, I’m going with that last one.

Willow and Misty are definitely smarter than me when it comes to being comfortable.

Revising one of my old projects, I’ve come to two conclusions, well three but that’s another paragraph. First is when I do stuff at home: the working conditions are kind of brutal. A positive side of working on work stuff at work, is there is more encouragement to take micro breaks. You know, like drinking a cup of coffee or taking a piss. It’s very draining to code at home, and I’m not a seventeen year old kid no more.

The suffering of CMake while reviving one of my own projects, finally crossed the “Just live with it” point, and I spent my day making a really good start on a simple json -> build.ninja generator. It probably helps that C++ and I are long time companions, and that I’ve a high tendency of hand writing build.ninja files rather than using a tool to generate them.

And whoever the hell decided to wake the neighborhood up at 0400, better knock that shit off. My first thought was neighbor taking the family on a their own Vacation ’83, my second thought was wondering if they’re skipping town before rent’s due. In any case Corky and I didn’t enjoy the sleep disruption.

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Sometimes it’s hard to decide whether the room I’m in is defined by what I’m trying to do, or by the comfort of dogs.

Willow’s well versed in finding the most comfortable spot she can, and in where the food eating happens.  Mostly she chooses her spot based around where I’ve chosen mine: but she doesn’t hesitate to influence this ad the requirements for comfort and such change.

The amount of times I end up changing between living room and bedroom to suit Willow’s preference, is probably balanced by how often my drifting around doing stuff causes her to follow me around and wonder if I’ve lost my mind or started sleep walking.