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Pandora…..Its not all about Free

Posted on October 8, 2011 by Sci Fi Engineer

Pandora, another technology and service that has changed my life. A couple of years ago I stumbled across some mention of Pandora and pushed it aside. A while later I went looking for a better way of getting music. I tried Yahoo, Google, iTunes and started listening to internet radio but didn’t like what I found, even for free. Then I ran across Pandora again and read the blurb on the Music DNA project that the company was based on.

I started to use Pandora, a little at first, then more and more, finally running into the hours per month limit. I did that for a couple of months, then had a look at the premium service. I almost quite because I hated paying for something I’d been getting free.

Then I had a bit of an epiphany, I cannot expect to always get good to great services for free, and the ones coming closest irritated me with their commercials. Pandora had already introduced me to multiple new artists and completely new genre and I liked how it worked…

I paid up and have never regretted it.

There are always a lot of words flying about how Free has killed the web, and how so many magazines and papers started providing free services and could not sustain it or get the readers they had to start paying. There were the ones who tried to start charging from the beginning, which generally died out.

But there are more and more places where people will pay for content. In particular in cases where, like me with Pandora, they really come to love the application and want more and can get it for a modest investment. The Economist essentially does this, (I was an addict long before the web version, but their current model has gotten me re hooked several times) and there are others out there.

The secret is providing the customer with a compelling experience and charging a fair price. Providing a me too experience with nothing special is not going to get customers. Newspapers in particular have yet to develop the right combination of experiences via the web. Local papers survive in the paper form because/when they have local value and because many of us love the crinkle of the paper in the morning. But its the value/content that does not transfer to the web.

I have to say as much as I love my iPad for most other forms of reading I still like the morning paper and its combination of format and topics….and by the way the funnies….the web-crowd always seem to miss how important the morning funnies are to folks. And its not just the ones I like.

And maybe that’s a secret someone needs to ponder. Like Pandora (and the Economist and WSJ etc) the paper pushes content at me that I would not necessarily choose to (or know to) go searching for on my own, I trust the paper to do a reasonably unbiased job of putting out content that is of local importance (even if that importance is in others eyes) making me an informed/understanding local citizen.

I cannot know what I should be paying attention to outside of a small set of things that are central to my life. The newspaper helps me pay attention to secondary stuff, I will not always agree with what is written but it does point it out. And that is important.

And to receive that daily packet of local color I pay, I would pay for it online if the layout and the presentation were compelling. But right now I go out to the mailbox every morning, rain or shine, snow and Ice, etc, for that few minute scan of my local environs and a few chuckles or groans at the comics.

By the way I live in Indianapolis and get the Indianapolis Star. A very good local paper that I hope has many more successful years ahead of it.

Tomorrow is another day but it never comes

Posted on October 7, 2011 by Sci Fi Engineer

I am editing and in a foul mood so I’m not going to get much of a post out today unless things improve. Hope the rest of you are doing better.

iPad, WordPress, Life and Genius

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Sci Fi Engineer

WordPress has a pretty full functioned blogging tool for the iPad which I’ve used twice now. Once for the blog about my covers and how cool the iPad is for the artist inside you. And now the passing of Steve Jobs, which I caught after I had already gone to bed and was sneaking some browsing time when I couldn’t get to sleep. The WP tool is especially useful for this sort of short posts and it illustrates a key attribute of the iPad its immediacy and availability at almost any moment to catch a thought, a picture, a moment.

I’m currently using it to track a recurrence of infection in an old injury. Taking pictures (with a seperate camera because I have an iPad 1 not 2) and putting them in keynote with some notes as to the date and progression of the issue. This also illustrates the power of the iPad as a life tool. I used this to brief my doctor on the issue, and as they say a picture is worth a thousand words. There are medical record apps and in the long run this will be how we access our centralized medical records.

Returning to Steve Jobs, I am sure that he did not design the iPad but he was key in many fundamental decisions that brought it forth. He was even more central in establishing the infrastructure that makes it a compelling tool masquerading as a toy.

Mr. Jobs saw that the PC model was failing the Tech world, as was the Cell phone model. He’d always had problems with those models, I think foreseeing their eventual collapse into commodity cannibalism.

He also understood that while the interface to the user is only part of the story, it is an incredibly important part. I said the other day, in some ways the iPad seems like an extension of my body. It is generally so easy that you can pick it up and start using it almost immediately after watching someone else manipulate it for a while, if you have an iPhone there is no learning curve. And even though it has some almost crippling weaknesses (lack of a true filing system up to this point being one) it is still so useful, so compelling that it has become a principle interface to the world

It was this sort of gestalt that Steve Jobs ‘got’ far earlier than his near peers. I think/hope that he taught the concept by example to the younger generation of visionary entrepreneurs who are and will follow.

Guttenberg 1398 - 1469

Guttenberg was not the inventor of the printing press per se or of moveable type (really) but he was the person who put them together. He is perhaps the most important person in ‘the modern era.’ Steve Jobs was our Guttenberg. Many will say this is overwrought that Guttenberg was much more singular….but I would argue that in his own way Steve Jobs was just as singular perhaps more so, because he had to wade through and stand above the tidal surge of ideas and voices that is the modern tech world, and had to do so over an extended period.

Steve Jobs. 1955-2011 (edit)

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Sci Fi Engineer

Steve Jobs has died. A visionary, futurist and industrialist of remarkable scope, his passing is a profound loss to the tech world and the wider world which he had changed several times in his too short life. He stood on the shoulders of giants and made them look small as he pushed us upward. He was ‘at’ if he wasn’t ‘the’ pivot of change a remarkable number of times since the 80’s. and while at times he was almost pushed aside his vision and drive always showed through and thrust him back onto his world changing course. There are no better words than ones that have been said before for other great men: Our world is poorer for his leaving it and I fear we will not see his like again in this age.

Rest In Peace

Aliens in the Belfry

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Sci Fi Engineer

In Sci Fi aliens serve a myriad purposes, but most often as humans in bad makeup. One reason for this is so that the author can tell an allegory without having to worry about being considered racist, or misogynistic, anti immigrant, anti american, etc. Also, if they act/react like humans but are described as ‘Other’ the reader has a much easier time relating, we can understand their motivations and like, or dislike, them. This makes telling a complex story much easier and makes it more enjoyable to read.

They also make better class of zombie, vampire, elf (don’t tell me Spock’s not an elf), gods (small g), etc. In other words they let us retell stories again and again just changing the protagonists and antagonists, the setting and the point of view, creating an endless array of potential stories to tell ourselves.

As a dilettante in the sciences my current expectation is that life at least at the level of microbes is fairly to extremely common, but life at the level of complexity/sophisticated seen on Earth is rare, possibly to the point of singularity. My expectation is that if life will probably come in many forms but from a terrestrial world you will get terrestrial looking creatures that, to the citified might just be one other weird ass racoon, or chicken, etc, they are unlikely to look like Predators etc. Would an intelligent dinosaur or wolf be horrific? Leaving aside the potential they’d consider us good eating or a lower class of pest that is.

And while a Non – Terrestrial world’s environment could easily produce creatures we have a hard time relating to (maybe they’d even be horrific in appearance.) They’re unlikely to want to interact with us except on a purely business matters since its unlikely we’d be of much interest to them. Though again empire builders might not care about having to live in domed cities while the locals mine the tar pits.

So having wandered all over the topic, what is my point you ask?

I don’t really have one I guess, I was thinking about the Post a Day challenge and then decided to post about what I would write if I take up the NaNoWriMo challenge and wandered off from there. Am I going to write Sci Fi again, I think so. Will it have aliens, again I think so, though perhaps not obviously. Am I going to try to do NaNoWriMo…who knows…if a big job hits at work then certainly not, 1,700 words a day and 80 hour work weeks do not mix. But the aether appears clear at this time. So Maybe.

Post a Day Challenge

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Sci Fi Engineer

Guess I was supposed to blog that I was taking part in the Post a day challenge 2011. But see I’m an engineer I only read the instructions later.

Of course one thing that will make this possible is my iPad and the WP editing tool for it.

Cheers all

NaNoWrMo…What to write, and how

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Sci Fi Engineer

My daughter sent me a not regarding the National Novel Writing Month. Since I’m in the middle of a lot of stuff right now, including trying to get Under Siege cleaned up and into Smashwords I figured that I’d just comment on it and move on. But there is something about the idea of taking a whack at it, the opportunity it would offer to get a bit more visibility to my writing alone is very attractive. I’m just not sure I can do 50K words in 30 days. ~1700 words a day? That’s nuts! Except I know I’ve done that and better in the past, when I was just slapping the keys and not thinking too much.

And I’ve got a couple of stories, more really, flapping around in the belfry. It would be fun to just let rip with new story rather than having to work on edits like I have for the last several months. I’ve never (purposely) written comedy, I’m not a funny guy, but maybe I could take a crack at it. What about a historical novel instead of Sci Fi. A western, a mystery or a romance? Though I doubt I could keep it on the straight and narrow I’ve never been able to before.

Maybe I’ll post it online, on a subsidiary blog, as someone at blog a day suggested, that might be interesting if possibly embarrassing.

Anyone out there interested in commenting?

Editing Writing with an iPad

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Sci Fi Engineer

I am here tonight to admit in front of you all that I am an addict. An iPad addict. I to have been assimilated into the great collective.

I read the Economist, Aviation Week and Space Technology, and more on it, follow the news and blogs. I watch shows, read books, play games, stay in (calendar) synch with my wife on it. But it’s not just because it’s the uber net to brain link, though that plays it’s part, that I am so addicted.

Despite what S.Jobs and others have said the iPad is a content creating platform, it’s just not a Mac or PC. For some jobs it is awkward and it does change how I express myself, writing and editing are harder and I tend to be ‘flatter’ less expressive but that’s not always bad I do have a tendency to be too flowery even repetitive if unconstrained (and use too many big words.). For art/picture creation it is a revelation. And it enables creation in places I have not been able to create in before, primarily on travel for my work because carrying 2 laptops is (for me) not an acceptable option.

I have created the covers to both my novels, one published the other upcoming, on my iPad and am happy with both, here’s the upcoming one the other is Moon Dreams shown down a few links.

While typing on the iPad is not as fluid as it is on my ThinkPad laptop it is possible to do lying in bed one finger hunt and peck.

The iPad has had a profound impact on me and my family, hopefully generally for the better (how else could I listen to Pandora and read Instapundit while on the elliptical machine at the gym?

National Novel Writing Month

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Sci Fi Engineer

November is National Novel Writing Month. They are sponsoring an authorship marathon, write a novel in a month, 50,000 words (175ish pages) between November 1st and 30th. That’s a lot of words for a non professional, and they press you not to struggle with editing or any of that other hard stuff, focus on quantity and not quality.

This is (for good reason) in line with advice by novelists of note S.King and J.Pournelle that you simply have to sit down and write if you ever expect to be a writer. There may be some people who are natural authors but most of us have to write a lot of words (in my case ~ a half million) before it comes reasonably easily most of the time. Which in the days before the computer and word processor was an even larger investment in time and effort than it is now.

Dawn @ Vesta

Posted on October 2, 2011 by Sci Fi Engineer

Vesta South Polar Region Dawn Framing Camera

The Dawn Mission is ultra cool, what’s not to love about orbiting an unexplored world. Motoring there on ion drive and planning to motor over to a new planet (minor) on your ion jet after you’ve finished with this one. This is what space exploration was supposed to be like….and it is, we just got too jaded in the mean time to understand what we are seeing. This image is from the Image of the Day.