Happy birthday, Genevieve!

My beautiful, talented, and creative daughter, Genevieve, has turned 17 this day. I remember that cold December night she was born; how her mother was in labor for a long time over the evening, how we walked and walked and walked during the labor, stopping every so often to press hard into her mom's back to relieve the back labor pains. The Chieftains' Christmas album played over and over and over on our little CD player and I was so glad I was able to be there to help. I welcomed my daughter into the world that night. She was the sweetest baby in the universe!

I hear from her mostly though Facebook these days, she's living with her mom in the Bay Area, but I am very happy to have that Facebook thread. I hope she has a most excellent day. She was a wonderful Solsticetide gift to us, and I love her so much, no matter where she is in the world.

Disability and the tipping point of transhumanity

I've been reading a lot of books, lately, about the Singularity and the ideas about the singularity. Charles Stross, Vernor Vinge, even John Scalzi has some stuff which challenges the nature of consciousness and humanity.

I was speaking to a new friend who was telling me about a disabled friend of hers, who effectively has checked out of the human race by making the focus of his life be virtual reality. I was immediately struck by two gut-level reactions; the first was "that poor guy, he needs human contact, needs to be dragged out of his shell, maybe have someone take him out to see the beautiful sky and feel the sun on his face and take in a play or have a hot chocolate." But then I thought about things from the Stross / Vinge perspective. Here's a person who is very happy in his VR world, whose *mind* is perfectly able, whose sexuality and social life exists online. It seems to be conventional wisdom that if you don't use your brain you lose it, and here he is shaping his life around something that gives him stimulation.

In the VR world he has lovers and friends and is active and admired for his personality and presence. I think that guy deserves to be happy as long as whatever's making him happy doesn't hurt anyone else. I think my first impulse had more to do with my social model of what my Grandma would've wanted to do to "help" him. Not that he needs my help!

I think that if we are going towards a singularity, it's possible that disabled / differently-abled / handicapped people will be the early adopters. They are getting the first neural implants, I'm certain. I know that Cynthia has from time to time asked for a new body - Goddess knows that I would give it to her if I could. Makes me wonder if she (or really, anyone) would still be with me if her body was 21 again, but I would jump at the chance to get her a pain-free life. I know that in our own private virtual world - the world of words she and I create together - she is a lot happier when she's visiting there.

I am still withholding judgment on the whole singularity idea. I'll pause while you Google it if you need to. OK. There are people who praise the coming of singularity as if it's going to be the salvation of the human race and there are people who feel the whole idea is creepy.

For me, I am still on the side of the hot chocolate and the sun on my face. But, having visited VR worlds in my head since 1985, I can tell you that I totally understand the siren song of bits over atoms.

Get that man a Blackberry that works for all of us.

This is my challenge to the technology sector.
I don't really know why this is not a no-brainer. Barack Obama wants to have a communications device as President that is a.) secure, b.) in keeping with the law and c.) allows him to have access to the outside world.
You're telling me that we can't create a secure Blackberry? Come on, guys. You're saying to me that we can't create something with Blowfish encryption, something that constantly changes its Machine Address Code, something that whips up and down the available spectrum like a crazed mongoose on steroids, something that isn't necessarily available to civilians but that could be made available to the Commander in Chief to be?

If I had glasses, I would be looking over their rims at you, Tech Sector. Give me a break. Get the man a new Blackberry. Why is this hard? He could probably even put in a good word with the FCC for you, get the thing approved early.

Mr. President-Elect, I would like to say that I think you should ditch the Blackberry and hire a tiger team of Google Android nerds who could do just that for you on the new Google phone. Their platform is more open, anyway - the only way we're going to be certain your security is good is if you publish the platform and have all the security experts try to break it.

I wouldn't even bother try to get RIM to play ball; this is a company with a glacial change strategy and an awful proprietary system.

Good luck, President-Elect Obama. Keep fighting for your own tech, your own personal working style. I'm rooting for you.

French Press Coffee….yumm!

The other day I procured a very inexpensive Bodum French Press coffee maker. It says "3 cups" on the box, but it should say, "3 faerie pixie sized cups" which should translate as "1/2 Bear Coffee Bowl Mug." 

But who cares? I didn't need that much coffee in me, anyway. Here's the thing; regular readers of my blog will have known that I have a Coffee Bot in my house. The Coffee Bot stores, grinds, and then instantly brews wonderful hot coffee into a thermal carafe. Unfortunately, the years have not been too kind to the Coffee Bot and its front basket access door has become somewhat difficult to open. No matter how much work I do to clean it and make it better, it's still got this door problem. It's a real problem - one has to literally force the door open!

The other problem with the Coffee Bot is that it doesn't make small batches of coffee well. So here I was, making a whole pot of coffee every day which happened to be about 3 times as much coffee as I drank every day. I was pouring a lot of coffee down the drain and that did not make me happy from a "Carbon Footprint" saving the earth kind of perspective. I mean, think of the expense to just get the coffee beans to the Bot. Now think about how I'm only really using 1/3 of the output of said Bot. Very wasteful, to my mind.

Here is where the Bodum press comes in. I've been reading about French Press coffee for some time and have wondered about it. I'd never had any until I procured my little 3-cup wonder. I love it! Yes, I have to get geeky and use a thermometer to see if the water has been heated to 200 degrees in my spinny-teapot. Yes, I have to wait 4 minutes while it brews. Yes, it is a little messy to clean out, but not so messy as the basket in the Coffee Bot! Yes, it gives me just one lovely mug of coffee. But that coffee is so.....wow. It's smooth. It's free of bitterness. It's the kind of coffee I imagine that Ishmael Wang made in "<a href="http://solarclipper.com">Quarter Share</a>" by Nathan Lowell. It's really good. 

So now I get to have many, many more cups of coffee from a bag of beans, I get to have geeky water temperature science fun every day, and I get to have a really good cup of coffee. Not bad for me, my wallet, or the planet!

i think, though, that socializing will require me to get a bigger Press, cause this just makes one mug at a time. Luckily, Bodum makes 'em!

They don’t make 30 year old windows…

Google 411 is dangerous. Used to be, when I got a wild hair and would want to know a random fact, I would have to wait until I was in front of a computer to search for and get a number. Now, however, all I have to do is hit up Google 411 on my cell.

With a little judicious hacking around, I can find any number I'm looking for.

Today, I finally got an answer for a question I've been asking myself every time I've come to work.

"Why is the Peachtree Plaza Hotel still looking like it has just been in a tornado?"

I asked that of the front desk person and she said that the reason was that the windows on the Peachtree Plaza Hotel are all 30 years old, and nobody makes 30 year old windows.

Nobody is able to create a replacement window that will exactly match the tone of the windows around it.

Isn't that amazing?

As a result, the hotel looks like a tubular version of those old time computer punch cards with lots of punches taken out of it.

Apparently the only working strategy to repair the look of the hotel is to replace every single one of the windows on the outside of the structure. Can you believe that? Every single window replaced!

If it were me, I'd hire an artist to turn the bad windows into some kind of cool design.

Anyway, this could be definitely a big symbol. It means you can't fake authenticity. It means you can't replace old things for new and not suffer.

But it could also be a symbol for a lack of planning. Didn't the hotel think they might one day want replacements for these windows? If so, why didn't they lay in a stash of windows? I suppose they would've needed to be exposed to the same environmental conditions or something, to be exactly the same.

It is definitely a symbol for the current economic times. In younger days, they would've replaced all the windows right away and damn the expense! Not today. Hotels, especially big tall hotels, are probably not as profitable as they once were.

This hotel was for a short time the tallest hotel in the world - it's not at all anymore. It rises up and dominates the Atlanta skyline, though. I love that hotel, and I hope they get it back to looking right again. But I have a feeling it's going to take a few years.

But at least now I won't be wondering every time I pass it by!

Happy birthday to my sweet woman, Cynthia

@Technomom, , however you want to call her. She is my sweet woman - the love of my life and the fire of my imagination. She is my lover, my partner, my playmate and I adore her completely. Every atom of her. Every muon.

Happy birthday, sweet goddess woman. Happy birthday, my partner along the road.

I am so glad you're with me.

A time for change; yes, we can!

I don't typically do political posts. But I wanted to say here, this:

Obama has my vote; it has been recorded and sent on. We may not change history here in Georgia tonight, but I am hopeful that all those who voted for him throughout the country will make their mark, cast their ballot and create an everlasting moment in the yielding sands of time.

No matter what other conflict, trouble, or difficulty I find myself in today, I know that I have done something today dedicated to lasting and sustainable change.

The Fog of a New Novel

boat house fog

Originally uploaded by 416style

Obscuring fog drifts in for me. I really like this Creative Commons-Attribution photo of a Canadian foggy day, and it reflects some of my current feelings. A new novel like my Eulalie project, requires a huge amount of creation. World creation, character creation.

My last book, Heart of the Hunter, was easier in many ways in that I was already familiar with the characters from a previous novel attempt (a NaNoWriMo novel that got to about 40,000 words and then collapsed) and I was certainly well versed already in Cora-Ni, the fantasy world I've been creating and discovering since I was 8 years old.

Eulalie means that I have to get to know these people, these characters who have started to speak to me. It also means that I have the real world to draw from. Now, you may think that makes it easier for me, but it doesn't. I frequently have a hard time thinking of the real world as being full of the narrative juice that makes writing fun for me.

So I can linger in text over the complex machinations of a sorcerer preparing a spell, but the day-to-day life of a social worker trying to make ends meet leaves me with a certain kind of ennui. If I am not intrigued and interested, my readers surely won't be.

My own advice to someone in my situation is "write what you love." And the thing of it is, I love Eulalie House and all who live in her. I'm just trying to pick up on the literary grammar and syntax of how one creates a story in this toolset.

I think that's what I should stick to: why do I love these people? Why do I care about them? What happens to them and how can I explain it in a way that will get the reader to care about them? Good questions to keep coming back to.

What Kris Johnson said…

This post here is absolutely right on point.

It's a post about two guys, Matt Selznick and JC Hutchins, who both bear consideration should you or your company be up to hiring ONE or TWO New Media Geniuses. It's not like New Media Geniuses are thick on the ground!

Take a look at KJ's post and see what I mean.

SambearCast for Blog Action Day: against Poverty 10-15-08

Today is Blog Action Day and I am Podcasting about it.

Give me 10 minutes of your time, if you will, to learn more about Blog Action Day and what you can do to help.

Blog Action Day info is here.

 

 The SambearCast for 10-15-08: Blog Action Day [11:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download