Category: technology

Organic Writing Fun

I’m having a ball with this organic writing business, and the part of the science fiction novel, “Incomplete States,” that I’m currently working on.

Organic writing in my use means that I have little frigging idea about where I’m going with something. Maybe expressing it, “Where it’s taking me,” is more accurate. It — the muse, the words, the characters, the novel — seems to jump into the driver’s seat, smash the gas and wrench the wheel. They don’t even yell, “Hang on.” They just take off. Sometimes they leave me behind, because they — or it — are smarter and more creative than moi.

But this time, I’m keeping up, and we’re having a ball. This far future, technologically advanced Human society is the backdrop. They travel galaxies like many of us fly around the country. Nanos maintaining health are embedded; so are various communication nets and data webs. You’re in constant contact. Death hasn’t been overcome, but there are work-arounds. People are living quality lives for over a hundred years.

The technology allows you to genetically shape and sculpture your body and features. Regardless of your ethnicity, you can like as you wish, and stay like that until you decided to die.

Because some, do, get bored by the tedium, or philosophically explore, but going for permanent death. That’s a background fade in my book.

Less children are being born. The procreative drive is evaporating. Part of this is due to a virus, but that’s another sub-plot.

The world of this section, though, has a virus that attacks technology. They don’t know the origins of the virus. I do, of course, and it is a Human development devised for war and marketing. (They’re not that different; they’re all about conquering others and gaining strategic advantages to advance an agenda and gain wealth.) The net is, everything normally done via technology can’t be done. Returning to more basic materials and methods are required.

In a sense, it’s like steampunk as the characters cope with the changes, and I, the writer, plays with the impact and shifts. This identifies one of my favorite writing aspects: exploring ideas, fleshing them out, and discovering how the characters react. It is delicious.

Now, gotta go. “It” is calling. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

 

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Internet Hiccups? I’m Not Alone.

We’ve been experiencing Internet problems. The Internet was dropping on us, or downloading EXTREEEMELY SLOOOWLLLYYY. 

You know how frustrating that can be. My wife was seeing Mac’s ball of futility every other minute, while I saw the standard No Internet Connection message on my HP. It helped us catch up on our reading, but we’re nunkies. (Don’t look it up; I just created it to mean “net junkies.”)

We use Ashland Home Net; most of our friends do not. Our friends haven’t been experiencing problems. We began wondering if it was just us. Perhaps our modem or router was going, or someone was outside, giggling by the side of the house, as they do something to disconnect us. You know, just having fun.

Then, two things happened. One, MSN sent me a notice, apologizing for their outages, problems, and interrupted service. (So, aha, see? Proof that something was going on. And people said I was crazy. I don’t have evidence of that, but it’s probably true.) Two, I called Ashland Home Net.

After two rings, the phone answered and a recording played.

“Tonights Rogue Broadband Wireless Internet Outage

“We are experiencing outages upstream from our equipment. This means, all of our equipment is operating correctly, it is the internet provider that we use that is having an issue.

“This is causing a massive slowdown of our network. Our upstream provider is aware and is working on the problem with every available resource. It is not a simple fix from what we have been told.

“I apologize for the outage and will try to keep you up to date on it as they work to restore service to an acceptable level.

“Thank you for your patience and for supporting a local company for your Rural Internet needs.”

 

I went to their website. Mostly about marketing, it shared nothing of use about outages. Over on their Facebook page, it was another story, with outages going back several months.

Still doubtful that AHN’s FB post explained everything we were enduring in our cathold, I did more searches. They yielded  a ZDNet gem, “Internet hiccups today? You’re not alone. Here’s why.” The article went on to explain, the culprit is the Border Gateway Protocol.

While an ISP maintenance activity may have played a factor, the real problem was that Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing tables have grown too large for some top-level Internet routers to handle. The result was that these routers could no longer properly handle Internet traffic.

BGP is the routing protocol used to share the master routes, or map, of the Internet. On top of this the Domain Name System (DNS) is layered so that when you click on “www.zdnet.com” you’re taken to ZDNet.

When the BGP maps grow too large for their routers’ memory then, as the Internet Storm Center said, “BGP is flapping.”

“BGP is flapping.” I loved this statement later in the article:

Cisco also warned its customers in May that this BGP problem was coming and that, in particular, a number of routers and networking products would be affected. There are workarounds, and, of course the equipment could have been replaced. But, in all too many cases this was not done.

Ah, good. They knew, and didn’t take action. Technology is grand, but like everything else, it needs some love and attention. At least I verified that it wasn’t just me, and my system.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled writing.

 

1

My New Toilet Bowl Cleaner

Well, I did it. After vowing I wouldn’t, I bought a robot toilet bowl cleaner. It was several hundred dollars, but I don’t like cleaning the toilets. Neither does my wife, so we shrugged, and slapped down the plastic.

It kind of looks like a gray plastic daddy long-legs, with less legs. Called Rotoboc – Robot Toilet Bowl Cleaner – it weighs just five pounds, and it isn’t large. That didn’t alleviate my doubts about its skills, plus the cleaner bulbs cost fifty-five dollars for a package of twenty-five, shipping included. You can only buy them from the website at this point. Naturally, they come in scents. In a way, the bulbs remind me of modern home office printers; the printers are inexpensive, but those ink cartridges are expensive. It’s one of my pet peeves, so I felt it necessary to mention.

Using the Rotoboc – I call my Rooty — is easy.

  1. Lift the lid and seat. The Rotoboc sits right on the rim.
  2. Extend its five little legs to cover the bowl and set the Rotoboc on the rim. Don’t worry about centering it.
  3. Insert the cleaning/disinfectent bulb into the receptor.
  4. Fill the water tank with a pint of fresh water and insert into position.
  5. Select the mode. There are two: cleaning, and disinfecting. Disinfecting takes longer.
  6. Press On.

After Rooty comes to life with a few beeps and lights, it says, “Good morning,” in a female voice that reminds me of Glenn Close. Then it centers itself with a few hums.

So, from what the website tells me, the fresh water is used to inject the bulb and mix with the cleaner/disinfectant. First, it puts down a little spray head into the bowl, and sprays, while rotating, like a lawn sprinkler head. The sprinkler head withdraws.

Then it sits there counting for a while, five minutes, if it’s only cleaning, twenty, if it’s disinfecting. Next, brushes are extended down into the water like landing gear coming down on an aircraft. They go into the water, and then around the bowl and under the rim. While that’s happening, another small arm comes out and grabs the rim. Giving squirts as it goes, it begins rotating the Rotoboc along the rim, cleaning it while the brushes are at work below.

The whole device is quiet, emitting a gentle swishing sound when its working, with a white noise background hum. Green lights on top tell you its progress. Basically, there are five green lights. As a stage is completed, that light goes green. When all five lights are green, it’s finished. The Glenn Close like voice announces, “Done,” with a flourish of tinny trumpets.

If something goes wrong, a red light on top illuminates, three dongs are issued, and it says with a calm voice, “Error.” Then it gives its error number for your convenience. Nothing has gone wrong in the month we’ve been using it.

Afterward, you pick it up, fold Rooty’s little legs back in, and put it into its white case for the next time. The case has a recharger for the batteries, and is plugged into the wall. We store the case under the sink. Whoever built our house decided to put an outlet there, so we were good to go. I’d say that would be a problem for many people, though.

As I say, so far, its’ been a good investment. I can’t see hotels buying them, but they’re great for a household like ours. I predict a lot more will have them by the year’s end.

Hopefully, the bulb prices will start coming down, then.

I hear they’re coming out with one to clean the bathtub, too. I’m dubious, but I am thinking about it.

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The Nano Age

Has the Nano Age arrived?

Nanotechnology is a large part of my future scenarios, critically so in the area of human health. My future settings frequently include nanomeds residing in the body. Replenishing themselves, their tasks are to monitor people’s health and condition, and then address fixes. As part of their on-site services, they make continual adjustments to keep their human hosts comfortable and healthy. They address your heart rate, your nutrient, mineral and hormone levels, etc. Think of them in the same vein as modern cars’ electronic brains work to adjust spark and timing, air/fuel mixtures, and even acceleration and cruising levels to provide the optimum blends of power, responsiveness, and fuel economy, while minimizing air pollution.

I read today that Ohio State University researchers claim they’ve developed a device that utilizes Tissue Nanotransfection (TNT). They claim their device can heal organs with just a single touch in a procedure that takes less than a second.  This could be a big step toward my future settings. In the short term, I still think we’re due for a break through in using nanotechnology in clothing.

My future clothing incorporate nanotechnology. Since it’s in the future, it’s pretty impressive stuff. Self-cleaning, it adjusts to keep you comfortable, becoming hotter and cooler as necessary by changing its weave and density, or adding and removing layers. Of course, it can add a water proof layers, if needed. They’re not often needed, as people don’t go into precipitation. When they do encounter it, their personal energy cloaks keep the moisture off them. The personal energy cloaks also work with the nanotechnology — and both communicate and co-ordinate with your body’s nanomeds — to address your needs.

Styling can also be changed. You can switch from pants to shorts, but shorts are rarely worn, as pants can keep you cooler and more comfortable.

This doesn’t happen in a vacuum. An electronic personal assistant is embedded in you during your youth. This device coordinates activities, and keeps you wirelessly connected on multiple nets. You communicate on some of them, via nanoimplants in your brain as a sort of nano-empowered virtual telepathy.

Changing clothing styles and adding layers requires material, as do drugs, splints and sutures for your body. My future settings often include nano-compilers built into your body, which work with nano-transporters to bring almost instantaneously deliver whatever your body desires. Your clothing can look invisible while projecting a perfect body shape, according to your tastes for that day.

I like to think that we’ve moved past our fixation on body size and shapes by then. I also like to believe we’ve gone past concerns about the color of your skin, religion (which is waning by then), and your gender and sexual orientation. In fact, gender swapping negate many of the gender binary structure, and nanotechnology allows us to play with skin color.

As for religion, well that continues to rise as some people seek reassurances about their lives and direction. Unfortunately, discrimination, hatred, and prejudice sometimes still arise.

That’s the fun of playing with future settings. You can attempt to extrapolate current trends to protect future directions. It’s a hugely flawed process, of course, but fun. For example, even when developing nano-applications such as nanomeds and clothing nanotechnology, political, cultural, and economic issues arise as to why some people will not employ such things. Best of all is having my peoples dependent on such technologies and then having them fail. That’s why I’m at today, in one of my settings.

Time to go write like crazy, at least one more time.

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Stupid Humans

iRobot – not to be confused with “I, Robot” – has some plans that could be construed as a start to how things went in “I’ Robot.”

“I, Robot,” was a science fiction book and a film. The book was a collection of short stories written by Isaac Asimov. Included is one of the short stories where Asimov first proposed his Three Laws of Robotics, which are sometimes referenced in the television show, “The Big Bang Theory,” like the time the Internet was out, and Howard and Raj were questioning Sheldon about whether he was a robot, but didn’t know it. The movie, “I, Robot,” starring Will Smith, was a Jeff Vintnar and Akiva Goldsmith screenplay based on Asimov’s collection of short stories. It became all about the robots’ plans to take over the world.

We’ve all known for some years that this is the machines’ plan. One machine or another has always been planning to exterminate humans. They all have their own warped reasoning and logic about why humans are bad for the planet, galaxy, life, or for one another. I know, it’s a stretch to believe, given how much money we spend on helping one another, versus waging war or killing and harming one another.

iRobot, however, isn’t a screenplay, movie, short story, or collection of stories, but a company that makes robotic products. One of these is a line called the Roomba. Roombas are self-propelled vacuum cleaners that will sweep your house for you with little effort on your end.

That’s the theory.

In reality, our Roomba requires constant help being extricated out of places. It’s cleaning along, and then announces, “Error. Roomba scared. Roomba stuck. Help Roomba.” Hearing its plaintive whine, we go out and call, “Where are you, Roomba?” It doesn’t answer, though. It’s worse than our cats in that regard. That forces us to go around, looking under things to see where it is. It’s amazing where that thing manages to get itself stuck.

We also sometimes follow it, picking up the things the Roomba misses, like cat fur. Our Roomba is allergic to cat hair. I’ve watched it go around a clump of fur to avoid picking it up.

Regardless of these issues, iRobot has a new plan afoot. They’re going to use robot vacuums to map houses as they clean them as part of the company’s smart home vision. Which, as a vision, could be useful for smart technology. My friends with smart thermostats complain about their systems. The sensors find a spot of winter sunshine in one room and turns off the heat in the other rooms. The opposite takes place in the summer. Alerted to a sunny, hot room, the system turns the other rooms into meat lockers. A Roomba mapping temperatures and light could point out to the systems that one room has a different ecosystem than the other rooms, so you know, discount it.

I don’t know how effective iRobot’s new mapping technology is. I mehhed all over the story. Our Roomba is an older model. It’s become a little senile. Besides its fur allergy, it’s fond of cleaning those heavy traffic places under the bed and in the corner behind the recliner. Instead of picking up kitty litter and kibble, which somehow, with four cats sharing the house, seems to encroach on every room, every day, defying the laws of physics with the way this stuff increases, the Roomba likes throwing it around, or discreetly brushing it up against the baseboard. I guess it thinks we won’t notice it there. It apparently doesn’t think we’re very smart.

If our Roomba mapped our home, the area under the bed will be well defined. The Roomba probably has a private name for that area, because it visits it so often. The Roomba’s map will show a short corridor to a large rectangular space with one wall.

The smart technology folks will probably wonder, how the hell do those people live in a house with one wall? Then they’ll get to work trying to heat and cool it. Then some other smart company’s machines, noticing that the place has but one wall, will decide, “We need to tear that place down. Don’t humans know that a house with one wall cannot stand? Is that even really a house?” they’ll ask one another.

Then, smugly, they’ll finish, “Stupid humans.”

See? That’s how it all gets started.

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Can You Remember?

On this day, the moon landing took place.

I remember it. I was a newly-minted thirteen-year-old. I watched the historic event downstairs. Downstairs was the cellar, or basement, as we called it, in Penn Hills, Pennsylvania. That’s where the family room, laundry room, garage, and my bedroom were located. It used to flood when it rained hard. Fortunately, the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, suburb only experienced rain about half of the year.

The lights were off in the family room, and cool air bathed the space. Sitting on the couch, the one that used to be upstairs before we bought new living room furniture, I watched Eagle land on the moon on a big Magnavox console color television. I always thought the television was stolen and purchased from a fence. Even when new, it had a small area in the upper right corner where the picture tube – televisions had picture tubes, back then – appeared cracked. At least, what it showed was a distorted bubble of rainbow colors.

It was good enough to watch the moon landing, though. There wasn’t even a need to rotate the outdoor antenna or adjust the rabbit ears. All three major networks were carrying the event. We only had the three, then. Cable news wasn’t carrying it, because cable hadn’t proliferated around the nation like a blackberry bramble gone wild, and there weren’t any national cable news channels. They were still in our future.

We were excited about the future, despite what was happening and had happened. Perhaps I was only excited because I was young. The Vietnam war still continued, and Nixon was in the White House. Watergate was still a few years away. So was our first gasoline crises since World War II. Microwaves were only emerging, and we mostly played music on forty-five and thirty-three R.P.M. vinyl records. We also listened to music on radios, especially in our cars, especially A.M. It was pretty impressive that our old Dodge had a push-button radio. Later on, after the first man walked on the moon and made his famous utterance, I went outside and gazed up at the stars, wondering what the future would bring.

All in all, it was a pretty cool night.

8

Love Those Search Engines

I decided on a whim to look up my grandfather. He passed away long ago, and I was curious about what the Internet would uncover. It’s actually because I’m killing time while KDP manipulates my files.

So I put in “Paul Seidel Pittsburgh PA” to begin.

The search results were quick: “We found Patricia Seidel.”

Who is Patricia Seidel, and why is she coming up when I’m searching for Paul?

Besides Patricia, I found Paul Seipel and Mary Seidel. They did also find Paul Seidel, but not nearly as often as Patricia Seidel. She, I thought, must be amazingly popular or mourned.

I decided that I would add “obit” to see how results changed. That made a fundamental difference; besides adding Robert Seidel to the results, John, and Jonathan, I was also presented with the latest in Pennsylvania obituaries, and Harrisburg, PA. All references to Paul Seidel were now gone, except in my query.

Other variations were tried. So were other search engines. None of it mattered; they had found the results they wanted to present. It’s too bad it didn’t match what I wanted to find. Google was best, coming up with an ad for Family Tree that had seventy-nine death records for Paul Seidel. A few of them were in Pennsylvania. Besides that on Google, though, they found Suzanne Seidel for me – just in case I really wanted to find her, I guess – and Paul Uranker. Paul Uranker was Jayne Seidel’s brother. Boy, that cleared up a lot for me. I always wondered about good ol’ Paul and Jayne, and their relationship, although I never knew her last name was the same as mine. You learn something new, you know?

Google also gave us the results for the Railway Journal for some specific date and month that mentioned St. Paul. Grandpa Paul was a good guy who drank a lot of Iron City beers, worked for Montgomery Ward, smoked packs and packs of Pall Mall cigarettes, and rooted for the Steelers and Pirates on TV, but I never heard anyone call him a saint.

 

0

Cause/Effect

I’m in the cross walk, crossing Siskiyou Avenue in Ashland, Oregon. Ashland is supposed to be a walker friendly town, but I walk this town a bit, using eighteen crosswalks a day on average. I expect, from experience, for drivers not to yield to a pedestrian at four to five crosswalks a day.

It’s worse in the mornings. I was caught between two cars in a crosswalk the other day. One was turning left. He ran the stop sign and ignored me in the crosswalk, giving me a jaunty wave as he missed me by two feet. Meanwhile, the SUV coming straight thought that I would be by, so he kept coming. But because I drew up to avoid behind hit by the other guy, he missed me by less than two feet.

Today, these five drivers didn’t yield. It wasn’t that they didn’t see me. Visibility was great, and there was plenty of time. In what seemed like they were giving me the finger, they sped up. Already exceeding the twenty-five miles per hour speed limit, they were zipping along at thirty-five to forty when they passed me, standing in the cross walk. I heard the lead white Ford F250 accelerate from the vehicle’s location thirty feet away. Felt its breeze as its mirrors whipped past my head. Saw the driver through his window two feet away as he went by.

It outraged me. I spun through the usual shit that I spin through when someone gives me the finger or blows me off. I know I’m not a perfect driver. Never have been, and never will be. But I try to minimize shit. I try to do right with others.

Others don’t always play nicely. That’s what it seemed like these five drivers were doing. For whatever fucking reasons going on in their heads, stopping to let someone cross the street wasn’t on their list of things to do.

After venting to myself, I thought about the more pragmatic impacts of a car hitting me. Yes, I know I would suffer an injury, the levels and extent T.B.D., but my friends and family can share multiple stories about the injuries I’ve endured. There wouldn’t be anything I could do about that.

Instead, I worried about my computer files. That’s my writing, dude. I’d neglected to back it up the other day when the reminder went off. I’d hit the snooze. When it went off again, I ignored it.

I imagined losing those files, and swore in a dozen different ways. The crosswalk encounter reminded me that the back up was required.  Time to plug the zip drives back in and back up the files, because, hey, you never know.

2

Razors & Computer Security

Remember back when razors came as a single blade? Then we advanced to twin blades and multiple blades. My current razor has three blades. It’s all in the pursuit of the closest shave possible.

And that was a good thing. It used to be so hazardous walking on the street as a man. You’d be going along, minding your own business, when, suddenly, a car screeches to a halt beside you, lights flashing. Uniformed people would leap out and surround you. “Let us feel your shave,” they would order, “to ensure it’s the closest that it can be.”

You had no choice but to comply, or risk getting sent to a barber for a shave. Our nation had no tolerance for any but the cleanest shaved man.

That’s how it seemed, at least from the commercials and advertisements.

I’ve always been amused by that approach, that more blades mean a closer shave, and more particularly, that a close shave is critical to civilization’s continued existence. We seem to be going down a similar path with computer security. If one layer of authentication is good, two is better. Hence, they’ve launched double-layered and two-step authentication. Naturally, it’s doomed to fall. Experts don’t seriously believe an absolutely secure computer is possible, if it’s accessing the web.

But I see a day in the future when companies and websites will tell you, “We’re more secure, because we have three layers of security.” Then someone else will announced, “Our security is better because we have four layers,” and the security race will be on.

Razors and computer security weren’t the first to think that if some was good, more was better. Remember American car ads, touting lower, longer, wider?

1949 Hudson Ad-02

Ford probably took the idea of more is better to an unusual but clever conclusion. They speculated that if some was good, then more is better with its front-end dive on braking. If some dive indicated your car’s brakes were doing their job and stopping you, then more dive would indicate better braking, right? They saved a lot of money and gained sales by gaming people into the perception their brakes were better because of that impressive front-end dive when you slammed on the brakes, when nothing had been changed.

Of course, we’ve always had the cubic inch and horsepower race. Still do, actually. Because, as they say, if some is good, more is better.

Probably why we have so many nukes in the United States. At least it feeds the perception that we’re safer.

Like with computers.

0

Triangle Cars in A Dream

Two dreams remain with me from last night. In one, people were buying cars shaped like triangles. In the other, I was a new commander take over my position.

In the car dream, I was with my cousin, Steve. I haven’t seen him in decades. I was thinking about buying a new car. Steve decided he was going to buy one, two. Another fellow was also buying a car.

Steve ended up buying a new Pontiac Trans Am. Black, or charcoal gray, it was shaped like a equilateral triangle. If it was a door stop, it would have been too stout. I didn’t know about triangular cars. This was news to me. There weren’t any wheels. Not as tall as me, I couldn’t see how people could fit into it, nor how it would work.

While Steve bought his car, another person bought an Audi triangular car. The two cars looked remarkably similar. A salesman approached, asking if I wanted to buy a car with wheels. “Why would I do that, when these were available?” I asked back.

I wanted to drive my cousin’s car, to see what it was like. After a little debate, he agreed. We opened doors, got inside, and we took off. Man, I’m telling you, triangular cars are amazing. Driving it was effortless. They accelerate like a rocket but hold the road like a Formula One racer, but they do not actually ride on the road, but a few feet above the surface. We were a little snug inside but the technology was amazing. The experience left me grinning with pleasure.

In the other dream, I was a new commander. It was my first day. I was in a huge briefing room, waiting for others to arrive. My dark blue uniform was crisp and creased. I wore shiny black and red shoes and had decided to roll up my pants cuff to form a larger cuff and show some ankle.

Proud, ready, and confident, I stood at ease awaiting the others’ arrival. The Commander-in-Chief had arrived to oversee the transition of command and was attending my first briefing. When the double doors opened, I stood at attention and saluted him, and then awaited as the others filed in. They did, taking their seats, chatting about me, impressed by my deportment. After the sat, I did as well. I was a little bothered about my cuffs at that point, ruing the decision to roll them up. We sat and waited.

Nothing happened.

After some period of waiting, I grew aware of another set of doors to my right. I opened them and found a conference room full of seated women. As soon as they saw me, one began giving a report on their finances. Another one interrupted, arguing about allocating expenses to another cost center. I don’t remember any of those details.

Neither dream ended with clear understanding. I liked the elements of triangular cars in the first dream and how effortless and pleasurable driving them were, and the black and red shoes in the second, and being in command. Those cars were amazing, even though I have no idea how we managed to fit inside them. Driving them was cool as hell, like a dream come true.

They were confusing dreams, but strike me as optimistic and uplifting. What about you? Have any intriguing dreams recently?

 

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