Friday, February 29, 2008
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
One Small Step for a Dad, One Giant Leap for a Granddauther
I am nerd. I am sure that you already know this and I probably have admitted that on this blog before; but, I needed to qualify this post. Being a nerd, I love technology and try to make sure that I don't become the kind of man that can't figure out how to program the clock on the "God Damn VCR". That doesn't mean that I need to have the newest widget. In fact, this weekend I bought a new computer but my old computer was an old 466mhz G4 tower. If you aren't a nerd, that probably doesn't mean much to you, but for those of you that are, you know that this is an almost ancient computer. I bought it in 2001 and with lots of loving massages, I have kept in almost perfect working order. I didn't "need" a new computer, my old G4 worked great, but I got a shiny new iMac anyway.
The point of this post isn't about me being a nerd or my new computer though. The point of this post is about my daughter Sophie and her grandparents that live 1000 miles away.
While I love technology, I am a little bit of a Luddite in that I don't believe that technology automatically makes life better. However, when I saw Sophie trying to mimic her grandma bix's crazy mouth contortions, I knew in my heart that technology had made her life, her grandparents lives and by extension, my life, a little bit better. Short of being able to teleport (come on quantum mechanics) I don't know of anything that is going to be able to allow Sophie to interact with her grandparents in the way that this technology does.
Technology has infringed upon our privacy, made the 24 hour news cycle unbearable, destroyed age old skills and committed countless other atrocities, but on Tuesday, February 26, 2008, it allowed my daughter to kiss her grandmother from 1000 miles away. And for this I am thankful.
p.s. For any poor souls surfing the web that are trying to make the video conference function of iChat work, I gave up. I was given the suggestion on the Apple support forum to give up on iChat and just download Skype. I did not have to open any ports on my router. I didn't have to worry about NAT (Network Address Translation) and most importantly it worked just as advertised within five minutes of downloading the application. I hope this helps.
The point of this post isn't about me being a nerd or my new computer though. The point of this post is about my daughter Sophie and her grandparents that live 1000 miles away.
While I love technology, I am a little bit of a Luddite in that I don't believe that technology automatically makes life better. However, when I saw Sophie trying to mimic her grandma bix's crazy mouth contortions, I knew in my heart that technology had made her life, her grandparents lives and by extension, my life, a little bit better. Short of being able to teleport (come on quantum mechanics) I don't know of anything that is going to be able to allow Sophie to interact with her grandparents in the way that this technology does.
Technology has infringed upon our privacy, made the 24 hour news cycle unbearable, destroyed age old skills and committed countless other atrocities, but on Tuesday, February 26, 2008, it allowed my daughter to kiss her grandmother from 1000 miles away. And for this I am thankful.
p.s. For any poor souls surfing the web that are trying to make the video conference function of iChat work, I gave up. I was given the suggestion on the Apple support forum to give up on iChat and just download Skype. I did not have to open any ports on my router. I didn't have to worry about NAT (Network Address Translation) and most importantly it worked just as advertised within five minutes of downloading the application. I hope this helps.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Someone hire her now.
Someone needs to hire this little girl as a movie reviewer. The part about talking back to Darth Vader is especially illuminating.
Not dead yet.
Yeah, yeah. I know that it has been a while since I have updated my blog. I haven't forgotten about the comic either. In fact I have about twenty written, just have to get around to actually making the comic. I don't really have a good excuse, just haven't done it.
Anyway, we bought a new computer over the weekend and in the process of moving files to the new computer I came across a bunch of old photos. Rachael commented on Anna's blog how seeing me in a tie contradicted her image of me in her mind and it got me thinking about how I have changed over the years. So, I thought I would be lazy and give you quick blog showing you some pics of me over the years. In my mind, I haven't changed at all, but the photos tell a different story.
Let me tell you. I was beating the women off with a stick when this picture was taken. If only I could have stayed this studly.
This picture I find the most shocking because it was my first day at college. I can't believe how young I look.
I am thinking about regrowing the beard. Seriously.
The women are still flocking to me.
Anyway, we bought a new computer over the weekend and in the process of moving files to the new computer I came across a bunch of old photos. Rachael commented on Anna's blog how seeing me in a tie contradicted her image of me in her mind and it got me thinking about how I have changed over the years. So, I thought I would be lazy and give you quick blog showing you some pics of me over the years. In my mind, I haven't changed at all, but the photos tell a different story.
Let me tell you. I was beating the women off with a stick when this picture was taken. If only I could have stayed this studly.
This picture I find the most shocking because it was my first day at college. I can't believe how young I look.
I am thinking about regrowing the beard. Seriously.
The women are still flocking to me.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Friday, February 1, 2008
One Expensive Sand Box
One of the incredible things about living in the year 2008 is that in many ways, ideas that were just science fiction when we were children are now possible. Wired has an excellent article outlining some projects that we could build with today’s technology if we were only willing to justify the cost.
NASA is planning on developing a lunar base sometime after our trip back to the moon in 2020, but they have to incorporate it into their current budget. That base could be built today but it would cost $105 billion. Cosmologists drool over the idea of a permanent lunar base because of the telescope that could be built. The Hubble is so remarkable because it offers images of deep space without the interference of the atmosphere; however, you can only make a telescope so big and house it in a satellite. That is why we are still building big earth-based telescopes. On the moon you could build a telescope that is bigger than any on Earth (lower gravity) and have no atmosphere.
Great Britain has outlined the cost of adding orbiting lounges to the International Space Station. These lounges could be used as that ubiquitous science fiction staple, the Orbital Hotel. The cost of each lounge would be about $1.2 billion. Granted science wouldn’t benefit greatly from having a hotel in space, but it would be damn cool.
How about a high-speed maglev train from New York to L.A. that is faster than a commercial airliner? Using established costs of construction, we could expect the budget for such a train to be around $70 billion dollars.
In the 1970’s “experts” predicted that we would have floating cities in the middle of the ocean. Such cities would be almost entirely self-sufficient, processing their own food, drinking water and electricity. Currently there is a proposal to build such a city that would contain over 18,000 homes. The price tag is $11 billion.
I agree that on the surface the above seems very expensive, especially when you consider the staggering amounts of poverty that exists in the world. With that being said, let me put it into a little perspective. We could build the permanent lunar base, the maglev train from New York to L.A., put over 100 of the orbital lounges in space and build 63 of the floating cities and still have some change left over, for HALF of the projected cost of the Iraq war. In 2006 economists predicted the Iraq war is going to cost America $2 trillion dollars. The above construction that I outlined, including the 100 orbital lounges and 63 floating cities, would cost $988 billion.
NASA is planning on developing a lunar base sometime after our trip back to the moon in 2020, but they have to incorporate it into their current budget. That base could be built today but it would cost $105 billion. Cosmologists drool over the idea of a permanent lunar base because of the telescope that could be built. The Hubble is so remarkable because it offers images of deep space without the interference of the atmosphere; however, you can only make a telescope so big and house it in a satellite. That is why we are still building big earth-based telescopes. On the moon you could build a telescope that is bigger than any on Earth (lower gravity) and have no atmosphere.
Great Britain has outlined the cost of adding orbiting lounges to the International Space Station. These lounges could be used as that ubiquitous science fiction staple, the Orbital Hotel. The cost of each lounge would be about $1.2 billion. Granted science wouldn’t benefit greatly from having a hotel in space, but it would be damn cool.
How about a high-speed maglev train from New York to L.A. that is faster than a commercial airliner? Using established costs of construction, we could expect the budget for such a train to be around $70 billion dollars.
In the 1970’s “experts” predicted that we would have floating cities in the middle of the ocean. Such cities would be almost entirely self-sufficient, processing their own food, drinking water and electricity. Currently there is a proposal to build such a city that would contain over 18,000 homes. The price tag is $11 billion.
I agree that on the surface the above seems very expensive, especially when you consider the staggering amounts of poverty that exists in the world. With that being said, let me put it into a little perspective. We could build the permanent lunar base, the maglev train from New York to L.A., put over 100 of the orbital lounges in space and build 63 of the floating cities and still have some change left over, for HALF of the projected cost of the Iraq war. In 2006 economists predicted the Iraq war is going to cost America $2 trillion dollars. The above construction that I outlined, including the 100 orbital lounges and 63 floating cities, would cost $988 billion.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)