Category Archives: Technology

Ideas for a NaNoWriMo Novel

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Anybody got any ideas regarding NaNoWriMo, still not firm on my basic approach or genre or anything….probably should keep it simple and the ideas I have even a flicker are all SciFi  or Fantasy:

  • Elgin Hampstead Chalmers, the down and out cowboy in spectacular north Wyoming who finds out that there is more to life than he had ever imagined.
  • Fifty, the living trigger of an interstellar IED left to wait long after the war she was created to die in has ended in extermination for her creators and their enemies.
  • Jason DoubleHammer, the son of heroes who just wants to be an ordinary boy and sail his boat in the big race. When he finds an odd friend hiding in a tree and quickly finds himself running for both of their lives across a world in turmoil.
  • Finna the swordmaid bodyguard of an elderly mage lord, she just wants to keep out of trouble for a year or so. But mage lord has found a gate into a strange new universe and he needs his bodyguard to come along on his last adventure. 

Any takers?

Pandora…..Its not all about Free

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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.

iPad, WordPress, Life and Genius

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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.

Picture of a world changer

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)

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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

Editing Writing with an iPad

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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.

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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?

Dawn @ Vesta

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Vest South Polar Region

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.

Health Care Costs (3)

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So to continue:  The way I see Health Care has seen a bubble in the US that has grown huge over a very extended period.  Most have called this ‘bubble’ Health Care Cost inflation.  But a bubble over any period between inception and bursting can be seen as (mistaken for) inflation. Is the HCC “Bubble” going to burst or do we have to just accept this as inflation.  I think that too many people want this to be Inflation, not a bubble. And I do not want a ‘bust’ but I do think we need to get on the off ramp, to a price plateau at the very least.

I’ve discussed:

  1. The pernicious effect of opaque pricing
  2. A spike in Cost/Value in capital investment (buildings and equipment.) 
  3. The Gov’t affected floor to pricing
  4. The profit motive effect of increasing costs in the system

Now I’ll add some more:

  • Direct sales…more and more selling of this that or the other service, drug, wonder cure, to the general populace who have no real way of parsing the useful from the useless or even harmful.  And then the sales guys got to congress and punditry and started demonizing those who tried to point out that the common man was not really in a position to make medical decisions. (Not that the god-doctors should be put in charge, much as many of them believe that they should be because they are smarter than anyone else.)
  • Litigation, because medical outcomes are impossible to ensure, and there has been a Lawyer bubble going on for many decades, doctors got sued more and more frequently, malpractice insurance costs went up and so another cost was added into the equation (and for a long time absorbed because the system hid the costs)
  • Specialization, again 9% of 10,000 is a lot more money than 10% of 5,000, but 15% of 10,000 is even more.  Specialist charge at a higher rate because they are specialists and have special skills, that are needed by special cases…..they don’t have to see as many patients, get to go to conferences and consult with other wizards and look down their noses at the rest of the world, even at other doctors.  What’s not to like? Just one more cost adsorbed in the system.
  • Administrative fief building, its a fact of nature, or rather an emergent property of human society:  administrations grows more complex and adsorbs more resources as time moves on, as the top level administrators increase the number of ‘direct reports’ then create hierarchies so they don’t have to talk to as many people so they can be ‘more efficient.’  Administrators (Bureaucrats) are extremely good at capturing the system and turning it to serve them versus the customer the system is supposed to serve.

So what is the solution.  Well I think you can see the one I would focus on first but that will be a discussion for another day.

Alpha Dog…next we have Wardogs…then Wargs

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Alpha Dog shown in this video is really, really neat technology but even in this early stage there is something very creepy about it.    If you connect this with what we have done with the Predator drone and its cousins….one has to wonder if we have opened Pandora’s box.  

I have written about Wardogs in Under Seige, a novel I wrote years ago and I will be publishing soon, and in passing about guard robots in Moon Dreams.  Saberhagen had the Berserkers et.al. for decades. But one does not have to get to AI’s gone berserk for things to get out of control. 

We may have paved the way to H E double toothpicks with Predators.  The Chinese and Russians, as well as others, will sell just about any technology to anyone.  We have the example of what tech did in the Arab Spring….is possibly doing in Syria.  What happens when the bad guys don’t have to risk their lives, or lose a night sleep, when they go after protestors and arrest or erase them?

Laptops and the PC model

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The earlier link leads to an interesting article on the PC industry.  The WinTel mass market suppliers have carried the Desktop market model into the Laptop arena and are now reaping the downside.    [This is what the US Car manufacturers did as well, developing too many me-to platforms and then forcing folks to option up singularly unattractive base models of which there were too many as well. ]

The solution is similar to the car industry as well: in the long run there needs to be  an emphasis on base quality and fewer options. (Is it not strange that this is what Apple is doing?)

BUT why not take a step back as well.  Components have gotten smaller and a Laptops frame can only get so small without losing functionality.  All these companies have developed custom interfaces so they can plug in modules for this and that but also standardized the chassis frames so that they can ‘plug in the modules for this and that.’ In other words they should have a platform to move to the Home Build market and let people build their own.  Companies could compete with plastic, aluminum, titanium or bamboo chassis with various levels of cooling sophistication in 17″, 15.6″, 15″, 14″ and tubby 13″.  Keyboard manufacturers could offer various keyboard modules.  You could buy motherboards with a variety of chip solutions .  Graphics solutions.  Phone net solutions.  LCD Panel solutions. Battery solutions.

Now all of this would require the establishment of an interface standard.  IBM did this for the Desktop market almost by accident, but there is no reason that companies like Dell, Asus, Acer, etc could not come together, they build only marginally differentiated systems now, the differentiation mostly based on a ‘keep those rascals out of my hardware’ business model and design history. 

What would this do?  1) Make it cheaper to build ma, pa and baby laptops to be sold in the big box stores. 2) Create a market for high-end technology in moderately tight form factors for a range of suppliers 3) Allow those with the tennies to move into building mainline power user, mainline business and high-end units which I believe will owe more to the MacAir than the ThinkPad or Inspiron of yore.