The Beetle and Dreaming Big

Behold, the “beetle”!  A product of the cold war and obsession with atomic energy.  Created between 1959-1961 this behemoth machine was designed to service a never created fleet of atomic powered aircraft.  I think it’s incredible the things that were created with such limited technology over 50 years ago.  I can understand that there may not be so much of need anymore for machines this grand but I still feel that there are few engineering projects of this caliber anymore.  Why can’t we have an AT-AT for America?

The reason isn’t LucasArts.  I can tell you that.  It’s more that we’ve stopped dreaming big in the words of the awesome author Neal Stephenson.

Dear Esther (Game)

I played through Dear Esther, the semi-video game/interactive story as part of finals studying procrastination.  I accessed it through onlive, the service that streams video games to your computer since my computer is quite old an is no longer really capable of running many video games.  Dear Esther is a couple years old and utilizes the Half-Life 2 engine.  You can purchase it for $10 or can pay $10 for the Onlive playpass like I did and have access to it for a month along with hundreds of other games.  I’ll try my best not to put any real spoilers in the review but it’s hard to get a feel for the game without some details.

As far as a game goes, Dear Esther sucks.  It’s really not a video game.  All you can do is direct your character around the island.  There’s no running, usable items, puzzles or tricks in the game.  You don’t see any other people or movement besides that prompted by the wind and waves.  The fact that you can’t run around the island and move at a walking pace was quite annoying at times but the idea of it is to appreciate the imagery and it’s difficult to do while your character is moving quickly.

Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson

Mona Lisa Overdrive is the third book of the Sprawl Trilogy by William Gibson.  Of the three I’d have to say that I enjoyed it more than the 2nd book Count Zero but less than the 1st book, Neuromancer.  I think that’s pretty typical for trilogies though, even for ones as loosely tied together as the Sprawl trilogy.

I’m really glad that Gibson brought back Molly (albiet usually referred to by a different name) for the third book but Count Zero seemed kind of weak character to me after how involved he was in the 2nd book.   I also didn’t much care for the way the book was resolved.  Gibson’s writing is quite difficult for me to picture and sometimes even follow what’s going on that the ending had me a little confused.  I very much prefer Neal Stephenson’s science fiction and am currently reading the Diamond Age.  Gibson’s future, while not a dystopia, is not a very positive friendly place.  Stephenson envisions a world just as chaotic virtually without governments but advanced in a more optimistic sense and I prefer that optimism.

Princeton 10k 2012

PJ's Pancakes in Princeton

The 10k at Princeton last night was not such a super race for me but I can live with it I guess as a first 10k.  I ended up running 31:15 which is only 7 freaking seconds off the 31:08 I’d have needed for IC4A’s.  Results can be found here:  http://tumeytiming.com/mm/Princetonhowell/  Disclaimer:  All my memories of splits are approximate and possibly subject to fatigue induced memory modification.

The race started out pretty decently and a lap into the race I was nicely settled on the rail behind Jon Squeri in about 20th place.  The 10k (at least this 10k) was so much more friendly of a competition than the 5k.  Nobody had a problem with just settling into a long line and I only remember getting pushed a couple times in the initial positioning.  So on the rail we were running about 72 seconds per lap which is a bit faster than the 74 seconds per lap that I was planned to be running.  Squeri seemed okay with it though I definitely didn’t want to be running alone so I just tucked in behind him and cruised along at 72ish’s for the first two miles.  I think I went through 2 miles at 9:36 and while I wasn’t feeling totally out of it I was thinking about how I was only done a third of the race and didn’t want to be crawling my final mile(s) so I ended up falling off the big front group.  I don’t think this was really a mistake but I just got kind of caught between running with a group that was a bit too fast and running with the group I should have been a bit further back.

Google’s Project Glass

Google gave more information today on their augmented reality glasses that could possibly be launched by the year’s end.  Thankfully, I think what they’re showing now looks a lot cooler than what they had before.  I have a feeling that these google glasses won’t take a single form either and that it will be much more like android where consumers will have the option of what hardware they want to buy.

I can’t really see myself buying something like this in its first generation but in a couple years I think these would be awesome, especially if the technology advances rapidly and I see no reason it won’t.  Right now as a student I think these might be of limited use to me because they’d be an obvious cheating problem in classroom examinations and I don’t see how they could easily aid in note taking.  Somewhere I could actually see them being useful (although the software required would probably be pretty tricky to develop) would be for working in lab applications.  Having something hands-free and voice controlled displaying information overlays to what you’re doing could be incredibly useful.  On second thought, maybe I’m crazy to think that they’d be useful in the lab but no matter what I think they’re really cool.

The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

In the past week and a half there were many times when I was reading when I should have been doing homework, the reason being Suzanne Collins’ trilogy is a set of very addictive books.  The Hunger Games is HUGE, as I’m sure you’ve noticed and even though they’re considered young adult books they’re very enjoyable to read.  I don’t recall highlighting a word of my kindle to bring up a definition very often (if ever for these books) so while I wouldn’t really consider the quality of the books as literature to be very high the story is excellent and certainly makes up for it.  All three books are very enjoyable reads and are quick but plan out when you’re going to start reading them because you might just find yourself unable to peel your eyes away from the pages until you’re finished.

So without further ado, here’s my review:

Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman

Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman is surprisingly not a novel connected in any way to his earlier work, the Forever War.  While they are similar in their objects to war the similarity pretty much stops there.  Forever Peace takes place exclusively on earth in the mid-21st century (almost exactly 2050).  1st world countries possessing nanoforge technologies that allow them to synthesize any object from a material bank rule over the world and prevent the 3rd world or developing countries from accessing the technology.  Central to this control, the countries possessing the nanoforges utilize “soldierboys” and “flyboys” – machines that are controlled by the thoughts of an individual jacked into the robot body.

What’s interesting about the way that Haldeman presents the concept, however, is that soldierboys are jacked together in a total group mind experience of 10 of them to a unit.  While jacked everyone intimately knows everybody else, all their secrets, feelings, emotions – precisely what it’s like to be that other person.  In this regard jacking for Haldeman is much more interesting a concept than jacking in other fantasies like the matrix.

Never Forget the Abandoned Waterparks of the Great First World Drought | Motherboard

This blog post of abandoned waterparks is delightfully post-apocalyptic.  I really enjoy these pictures of human creations reclaimed by nature.  Never Forget the Abandoned Waterparks of the Great First World Drought | Motherboard.

Spring Break 2012

Spring break of my sophomore year has come and gone as I write this Sunday evening before starting class again tomorrow morning.  It’s been a nice little break with equal amounts of academic laziness and high quality training here in Syracuse.  I’m excited for the coming summer after spending this past week with my teammates in the uncharacteristically warm weather.

Over spring break I was able to do quite a lot of work in the lab, failing to go in only on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday out of the past eleven days.  By the end of the week I needed a mental break more than anything since what I’ve been doing for what seems like forever hasn’t really worked.  I do think I know what needs to be changed in the procedure now so tomorrow will hopefully work out much better.

I had my first casino experience over spring break as well when we went to Turning Stone Casino.  My experience confirmed my belief that I’m not much of a gambler preferring to make my way through life slowly and steadily instead of with risky leaps and bounds of fortune.  Taking $80 I was never more than $15 down and ended up only losing $1.05 to the casino, which I doubt is a feat that many people can ever say they have managed.  I don’t really believe in luck (or rather fate) so it’s fitting that I didn’t win I guess.  Slot machines remain even more incomprehensible to me.  Roulette, a game of obvious chance where I can do the calculations of my losing in my head gave a much greater rush but mainly because the minimum bet was $5.  I couldn’t help thinking about the odds the whole time and the fact that with every play I could be losing $5.  So overall, while losing $2.05 on the slots I gained $1.00 at the roulette table.

For training, we did a good track workout on Wednesday and then actually went to Tully for a workout/longrun on Saturday.  Despite some troubles through this winter I think this spring will be the time when I finally have a breakthrough in my racing.

Accelerando by Charles Stross

Accelerando is the most singularity centric fiction book I’ve ever read.  It follows a family over the 21st century across three generations that become increasingly difficult to connect to as they truly transcend what it means to be human.

I finished this book close to two weeks ago and really just haven’t had the time (or probably more the willpower) to write a review.  I saw it suggested as a similar book to my favorite, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson but it’s really no where close to be as good as that and the story is vastly different.  I did enjoy Accelerando but it’s certainly a fringe book and parts were difficult even for me to read through.

I added the word extropian to my vocabulary, which is simply a lovely word about the belief that technology will propel humanity to control increasingly greater amounts of the matter in the universe.  I had heard of the term matrioshka brain (like russian matrioshka dolls) before but this book really brought the idea to life.