Author Archives: Sci Fi Engineer

Unknown's avatar

About Sci Fi Engineer

Husband Father Writer Engineer

I am going to try and get back on the Blogging pony

Posted on by
Reply

My problem is that I often have more things I would like to talk about than I have time to formulate thoughts so I just get depressed and don’t do anything.  But I’m working on all those bad habits and hope to be back in the saddle and trying to upgrade to real horse class.

As much as I love writing for you dear reader, I also write (and formulate) for my job which can sometimes absorb me 10+hours a day 6 to 7 days a week for several weeks at a time, over periods of months with lots of travel as well (this year I was flying somewhere most weeks for the first four months.) But its also very erratic depending on business cycles, the gov’t fiscal year cycle, customer side infighting etc, etc.so I get long periods of relative inactivity which can be almost worse, because I need a lot of feedback to keep in the grove as it where.

And then there is my other writing habit, my sci fi…..dad has given me an edit of Elgin that I have been twiddling away at for months, once I get it done I will do a final submital and move on, I have three other stories in the Iffrit’s universe at least partially written and want to get back to them sometime.  The second book in Exotic Contraband — Home is where the heart lies.  is ready for a final scan, cover art and uploading.   Written and edited but awaiting a Smashwords gloss edit and then the clean up are Skil and Across a Sea of Suns (probably two to four books.) Beyond that the book I was working on when I discovered Smashwords, one no one has seen yet that I call The Demon Engineer is begging to be finished now I have some new ideas and clarity about how to close the story-line’s arc.

So there is a lot going on in my intellectual life, on top of things like daughters getting married, aging car crap, mutant pool scum, honey-dos I should have done three years ago, rehabbing the basement, garage sale and trash haulage to clear  some reasonable fraction of the crap out of our lives  etc, etc, etc.

Sigh, Okay so I should quit my whining, I have an interesting job, working with great people on things I think are important for the country and the future.  I get to freely emote on anything I care to and try to get people to read my thoughts as encoded in these little squiggles.  I have a wonderful wife, great kids, generally a life that a vast majority of the world would envy.

So, on that cheerful note I’ll end.

Cheers and hope you come back to read some more soon.  It’ll probably be more serious next time….maybe more on health care, or the coming drone-apocalypse, or something else juicy…

So now I become a product shill for Logitech

Posted on by
Reply

I used to use MS mice and keyboards but have found over the years that they can be a bit iffy regarding quality, they always look nice but after a few weeks they either quit working or seem to require unplugging/replugging (rebooting) every few days or hours and then quit working altogether.  I also found that the early big wireless USB keys were annoying to damaging.  Then I found Logitechs ittle bitty USB keys, at first one per device but now they have a unifying key that works with up to six devices per ea, now every computer I own has one of the keys and one, two or three devices connected.  They just work and the software for managing the devices and the key system is simple intuitive and again just works.

I just bought my second set of wireless mice + Keyboards this evening, an M525 mouse I got for 24.99 and a K360 (compact) keyboard (29.99) to connect to my old ThinkPad T42 that I have just dual monitor connected to my big DELL 24 in monitor sharing it with my DELL psuedoUltrabook from work.  My work setup has a M515 mouse on a unifying key and they don’t bother each other a bit.

By the by, Dells are inexpensive but solid, easily managed machines for the working drudges in the world (like I me when thinking for a buck) but I bought a Leonovo ThinkPad for myself and my writing habit.  While I did not go overboard on hard drive (and maybe should have) I did put in a big dollop of main memory and paid for the upgraded graphics.  Those splurges plus the inherent ruggedness of the ThinkPad have served me well.  I have typed many hundreds of thousands of words on the world class keyboard (the A key plastic is word down so its ridged and the graphic has worn off) but it still boots up faster than any of my Dells, XP is still rock stable and II still love the trackpoint mouse knub in the middle of the keyboard.  It’s lighter than most of my Dells up until the latest little devil and the 14 in conventional aspect screen is better for a writer than the movie slot screens that are so popular today.

So anyway, there you have it, Logitech rocks, Thinkpads rock, Dell has its place in the scheme of things.

Cheers out there

More Blue model Blue Growth

Posted on by
Reply

Saw an op-ed in the Indy Star that started out asking what Romney would say to a police group about explaining why we don’t need more police on the beat.

Juxtaposed with an article elsewhere pointing out that violent crime is at a 40 year low after a significant reduction for the last however many years and that even none violent crime is decreasing.  And this during a recession!

An argument can be made that this is because there are more police and more prison cells than ever before.  Or it could be because police patrolling practices with focus on trouble spots and keeping feet on the street are inherently more effective than the blanket patrol car and large precinct office staff model that preceded it.

However given that most police forces are unreconstructed and there are vast opportunities for more effective use of the people on hand, the need for more police is to me; at least unclear and possibly even preposterous.  As WRMead at ViaMeadia might say this is just more Blue model thinking, pressing for more Blue model growth.

Given that historically locking thugs up just opened niche for other predators to move in, it’s more likely that video games are absorbing a lot of youth time that used to be spent getting into trouble.  And its harder to make crime pay these days unless you have to be savvy, connected and have the gear to do it right or you get no payday.  And with the prevalence of violence in the criminal strata, it seems to me that the number of fools willing to take up the life has to be somewhat limited.

The biggest concern that I have is that a permanent criminal culture could develop, one that is all but self-sustaining, like the preceding and overlapping welfare culture.  This culture is so isolated from the larger american society that its members do not see themselves as having an interest in or path into the society at large because its alien and in some senses very cold and unfeeling.  In the criminal culture life may be ugly and short but it may also be very much focused on immediate gratification and the id of the young men who are its principal actors.

 

Exotic Contraband – Lost among the stars…now on Smashwords and soon to be at iBooks, Nook Books, and more

Posted on by
Reply
The blade Stonewall approaching the spindle Athena making for a sungate

The blade Stonewall approaching the spindle Athena while making for a sungate jump point

Exotic Contraband:  Lost among the stars:  Aliens are real and they’re here. Unfortunately they aren’t here for intellectual stimulation, they’re here to make cold hard cash. And they aren’t interested in letting the authorities, theirs or ours, in on their racket.

This is the story of survivors lost in a universe that they hadn’t imagined, and the story of their rescue and return.

It’s only 99cents and a steal at many times the price if you enjoy a good read with a mix of hard and space opera sci fi with a little action and romance thrown in.  And why is that ship called the Stonewall?

See it all at Smashwords.

I Am Chrome Now

Posted on by
Reply

Have to admit that I have resisted Chrome though I loaded it up long ago along with Safari, which Apple forces on one when you have an iPad.  But today Explorer blew a gasket, I think because its really out of date and can’t handle the new IP address system.  I’m still on XP on this computer (heck I’d be on 2000 if I had my druthers.)

Anyway, I’m uploading my latest Novel to Smashwords and I’m waiting to see if I pass the great Meatgrinder approval check first try.

The future may be now

Posted on by
Reply

Private space flight becoming mainstream

Ability for a person of moderate means to buy tools to build almost anything

Quantum effects erase the speed of light barrier

Ability to design materials down to the atomic level

Personal communication between any two people anywhere on earth with minutes if not seconds

What of the above was not science fiction a decade ago…well maybe the last, but it was definitely sci fi twenty years ago.

We live in an age of wonders…we just don’t always appreciate it.

Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt

Posted on by
Reply

Winston Churchill:

 Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

Theodore Roosevelt:

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

Go have a look at other interesting quotes: BrainyQuote

Two men, great men many will say, and with great flaws.  But were those flaws…Bugs or just Features…in the time and society they existed in?

Looking backwards without the right perspective can distort more than it can clarify.  Just like the too common view today that Christians have been crushing the poor Muslims ever since the Crusades.  When in fact the Crusades were a rather haphazard and ultimately futile attempt to defend the Christian majority who had lived in the middle east since Roman times. Christians who were being conquered and subjugated by the (at the time) newly minted religion of Islam and the expanding empire it formed the basis of.  It was Christian Europe (with all its faults) and probably modern civilization that was under threat, not the Moslems.

Blue Model and it’s replacement…better not less

Posted on by
Reply

Walter Russell Mead at his usual level of clear thinking:

As good quality education and health care become more expensive, it becomes harder for society to provide these goods to those who cannot provide them out of their own earnings. The development of a good $10,000 bachelor program would do more for low and lower middle income families than doubling the size of all student loan programs. Generally speaking, anything that makes education cheaper and easier — shifting from a “time served” model to a skills learned model for awarding qualifications and degrees, breaking the guild monopolies through accreditation and other systems so that more institutions can compete in the market — will make society less blue, but make the poor better off.

It’s probably right because it’s clean and simple looking.

Posted on by
Reply

20120410-065045.jpg

From SAE drivetrain e-newsletter

Arens’ automotive-hardened traction inverters with power ranges from 30 to 500 kW (40 to 670 hp) are for applications ranging from large transit buses and medium-duty trucks to hybrid passenger cars. With the Powerpac series, adapting an existing vehicle design to hybrid power does not involve intensive re-engineering. The Arens Powerpac 100-kW (134-hp) traction inverter features a high power density in a compact enclosure designed to fit with the battery, in the vehicle’s existing battery box. The inverter offers an insulated gate bipolar transistor-based design and is suitable for truck, bus, agricultural, and construction equipment applications. All Arens inverters feature cast enclosures sealed to IP67 with intelligent thermal protection.

Jenny Hessler

Very much like what my team at SatCom came up with for the AIPM Advanced (or Automotive depending on the audience) Integrated Power Module. The switches are bolted to the base the bus bar connects across them with capacitors integrated as close to the devices as possible and the gate drive and controller board on the other major flat face. Doubt any of the Aren’s team ever saw anything we did, it’s just the most economic and sensible use of surfaces and volumes to get the best performance.