Once again convenience rules

How dependent we become on modern convenience - like home Internet always on.   Nine days ago my dial tone and DSL disappeared.   At first, my inquiry found a recorded message about a cable cut.  So I waited, and waited...and finally figured I should call again after a week.  I did, and this time they scheduled a technician to come out, two days later.   They must have found the problem, because today when I got home from work, there was a strong dial tone  (what a sweet sound).    Meantime I had used wi-fi with a tablet at my local library.  

     It was an educational hiatus for sure.  A way to get used to mobile Internetting and computing.   My only limitation is the one-finger typing you do on a virtual keyboard.  But I understand you can get Bluetooth keyboards and such for tablets.  No need for that now, but good to know just in case.   The near-pervasiveness of Wi-Fi is a godsend when things go down at home.  But all of the once-in-awhile sites I visit will finally get re-visited.   Lots of junk mail to delete.    Happy Netting, wherever you access it from.  (In the near future it will probably be hardwired into our brains anyway.)

Some choice selections

Here they are:

www.createspace.com/4281639   - A Strange Enterprise

www.createspace.com/3859469    - Future Property

www.createspace.com/4661301  - The Osmotics

www.createspace.com/3633147  - Mirror Worlds

All science fiction collections for your enjoyment, they are also listed on Amazon.com, and all should currently be available in Kindle e-book form.    Enjoy  :-)

Iowa not-so-secret

Go ahead,

mock yourself with corny bacon humor,
frighten the outsiders with tales of overwork,
tasselling, baling, sweating, shoveling manure
out all over the place for 50 cents and a laugh.

Coat that luscious spring beauty with

bacon grease and tales of woe,
but you won't fool me. I've been around,
seen the beautiful spots, taken in fragrance
of sheer growth surges and color displays.

You hide your secrets well,

your brightened tourist depots,
sunny bike trails and laughing youth,
polite guides charmed to have a visitor,
ready with answers to most questions.

Your picnic tables overflow with

delicious home cooked abundance,
Your river valleys can awe with the
best of the mountain ranges...

All the more so,

since they can be driven to,
no ropes or parachutes required.
Just a bicycle, for the best views.

Go ahead and

throw your manure elsewhere,
your secret is safe with me.


-end

The ol Space Poet

Years have disappeared in the white-hot dust, yet somehow I still remain. The flights are several a day now. Sometimes I still marvel at the growth, but more often I just cover my ears. Why are so many eager to get off this beautiful blue orb hanging in the sky, I wonder. Young men in their hard prime, young women in their comely loveliness shelled by hard exteriors. They can't wait to go out into the void, be pummeled by weightlessness and radiation sickness. The future beckons, and nothing can stand in their way.

I suppose I was that way once. But I was too old before space became a destination for the masses. Birthed along with Sputnik, my hopes soared along with the rest of our generation. A lifetime of survival followed. Space was for the astronauts. Fans like me sat back and watched, waited for the wonders that were supposed to follow, but never came. Finally, in my 50's, I moved to New Mexico, to a desolate strip of desert that held out hope. Hope that someday, regular commercial space flights would happen.

The first few years were pretty slow. A tourist flight one week. A NASA suborbital shot the next. But I hung around, finding odd jobs cleaning and driving a tour bus. And then a breakthrough in propulsion tech happened: someone found the perfect combination of electromagnetic and chemical reaction, and managed to contain it in a smaller vessel. And then the race was on to occupy the Solar System, before someone else got there first.

An inventor came out of nowhere. After his standardization of swappable L-ion battery packs for cars, and construction of a hundred exchange stations, he made his first billion. (Just pull in, swap out your Lion pack for a charged one, and off you go, juiced up for another hundred miles).Then, he set his sights on space. His system for paving America's roads with electric cars was not repeated with spacecraft – at least not at first. But he kept at it.

When he tested his first successful hopper-rocket with the new propulsion pack, everyone thought it was a stunt. The second time, the world was watching, and they were suitably stunned. The third time, he had to go into hiding afterward. The one who opened up space to the masses was arguably as popular as Jesus Christ for a time.

I was there, when the hoppers hopped. And when the tourist cruisers followed. An early crash disaster was horrible to witness. But that only slowed things down. When the first asteroid with a gold core was discovered, things really got crazy. Thank god they finally built a couple more spaceports on the coasts, and re-purposed Cape Canaveral and Edwards. Our routine here in New Mexico settled into a steady twenty or so flights a week.

Now, the once-deserted Spaceport is surrounded by glass and diamond coated skyscratchers, and I have my own little spot just off the main terminal. I get to spin poetry and song into an entertaining weave for the traveling masses. They throw coin, nugget and currency into my basket, along with cash-cards.

I was born when the whole space thing started, and I want to live until we reach the first Star. They keep saying the mission is just around the corner, but I am already pushing ninety. Wish they would hurry things up; I can't wait forever, people!

 

     - end

 

Thirteen stories about planets that really exist

It is still out there!

http://www.amazon.com/Keplers-Dozen-Thirteen-Stories-Distant/dp/1885093683

Check this out

A fellow writer and blogger.   Very prolific man.

Stephen L. Brayton
www.stephenbrayton.com
www.stephenbrayton.wordpress.com
www.braytonsbookbuzz.wordpress.com

Thanks for taking a look.

May Ride

Lather delirious purple mother,

and garden less trudge women,
never bed mess crush man juice...
Beneath beauty shadow smooth shine

The pedals churn,

breath flows in and out,
words tumble through the mind.
Cares pushed aside like so many
empty beer cans, useless concerns.

Nothing can be done,

so you might as well enjoy the ride –

Elaborate repulsive whisper friend diamond,

puppy picture sun apparatus frantic goddess,
sordid luscious want peach summer...

and always and ever anon,

I still love you.

-end

Future Present

Science Fiction has to race to stay ahead these days.   If someone made the movie  "The Terminator" in 2014 instead of 1984, that T-800 would not be quite so dumb.  While scanning the humans in infrared and so forth, it would be recording their every move in an onboard 10TB flash drive.  It would also be uploading hi-def video to Skynet.  In turn, Skynet would be doing massive calculations based on past observation of human subjects.  That poor fleeing woman would not have a chance.  The Terminator robot would be thinking three steps ahead, and re-calculating everything based on her current actions.  

     For todays readers, used to cellular everything at their fingertips, these things are not such a stretch.   A networked-in person, 'seeing' a live Net feed in part of their eye, would blink to snap pics, or twitch to upload them, or another action to record full video in a memory implant deep in their Cerebral Cortex.  They could share the pics, videos and documents with other people present, or lock them out, or route messages wherever they want.  All built-in, powered by the body's own metabolism.

     The whole terminology will change.  The Internet (a 1960's term) will morph into something else.   A "text" will become something else, like an e-thought.    Technological Telepathy will arise, and perhaps if we want, we can be hived into certain groups all the time, 24-7.   Or (hopefully) we can decline the implant, or lock out the hive feature, and forestall becoming too Borg-like too soon. 

     Change is happening already.   Perhaps evolution will favor offspring with faster thumbs for a time - until the implant culture takes off.   Then, the fast thumb crowd might be left twitching by the side of the road, passed by a more thoughtful crowd.   Who knows where it will  end up.   My theory is that we will end up becoming tightly organized bundles of pure energy, and nothing will be withheld from our purview.    Unless, of course, we destroy ourselves in some nuclear stupidity first - or some superior race does us in.  But the Sci-fi crowd seems to need to keep running shoes on to keep up with some of this.  At least the older ones like me do  ;-)    Thanks for reading.

Pillaged We Are Defeated

Cut those good jobs and jack that profit up,

flesh and blood people are expendable;
For the boardroom set nothing is off-limits,
as long as drastic moves stop short of their offices.

Do they ever pause in their ugly harvest

and think of the greater cost to society?
How hellish an America they are creating,
as they cut and destroy every job opportunity?

How long will it take for the US to surpass

various “third-world” countries in misery?
Immigration may reverse itself once awareness
of how meager an existence is afforded our citizenry.

Huge corporations, especially high tech, better

wake up and invest in all of us, or we falter
and fail and drop to the bottom, easy fodder
for a superior nation to walk in and conquer.

     - end

 

Musings on a Technological Tuesday

The comm tech chatted about his latest desire,

a projector app attached to his Galaxy phone;
Already surrounded by computing devices,
He wanted still more of them at home.

Outside his work office, many bays and lineups

wink and hum, all busy transporting terabytes...
New management tours the techno-wonderland,
catching up to a speeding train of data transport.

On other floors fibers in bundles move light,

narrow beams modulated to carry gigabytes;
E-mails, videos, photos, faxes and even voices,
all crowd together and ride the same beam-flight.

Humans who work around the speedy transports

are glacial by comparison, architects though they be.
Mountains gave rise to forests, then swift wildlife.
Ultimate life gives rise to ever faster cyber-entities.

Perhaps someday the cyber-life will birth something

even faster, some trans-light particle beings?
The cycle continues, and we flesh-and-blood types
will be left behind with our crude analog droppings.

 - end

Wild Animals live before your eyes

Wildlife Cams

Decorah Eagles

http://www.ustream.tv/decoraheagles

Sportsman's Paradise live cams

http://sportsmansparadiseonline.com/Live_Webcams.html

National Geographic Crittercams

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/crittercam-wildcam/

Hancock wildlife cams

http://www.hancockwildlife.org/?topic=cam-sites

Ustream TV live cams

http://www.ustream.tv/explore/animals

Pixcontroller wildlife webcams

http://pixcontroller.com/WebCam/index.htm

Audubon Society top ten webcams

http://mag.audubon.org/articles/blog/top-10-wildlife-web-cams

Global Animal cams

http://www.globalanimal.org/wildcams/

Berry College Eaglecam

http://www.georgiawildlife.com/BerryEagleCam

Explore.org Blue Cavern – guardians of the sea

http://explore.org/live-cams/player/aquarium-pacific-live-cam-2

 

- Enjoy, and also check out www.createspace.com/4661301 .

Hacking the Hacker

I was deep into an algorithm for a recognition engine. We were rapidly forging ahead with our transaction program. Since we had completed two other projects, this was going to be our last, crowning achievement at this year's Hackathon.

“Hows it going, Jack?” A shadow leaned over me.

“Not too bad. I have the bare bones, now I'm tweaking it.” I paused, resenting even this interruption, and took another swig of my energy drink.

Sanjay peered over my shoulder, and studied what I was doing.

“Video purchase? So you are stubbing the video file itself?”

That man was fast. “Yes, the temp file anyway. It preserves the purchase record even if we delete it off an intermediary server. Then the software can re-copy it, and the billing is preserved.”

“Not bad, Jack, not bad at all.” Sanjay grinned, and gave me a thumbs-up. That gave me a rush almost as good as the hypercaffienated drink I was swigging.

“We have two hours to go. Keep it up, man,” said Sanjay. Then he moved off to the next coder.

There were ten of us in all, and you could cut through the hacker smell with a knife. Every hormone and brain cell in this group focused in on one goal: To put out this last jewel of a product, and take home a trifecta – the 2014 coding challenge trophy. Each member would also win a thousand-dollar scholarship, not to mention the name recognition.

But Theta Team and Omega Team knew this too. They had both put out some usable product already. This would not be an easy race: Whenever I glanced over at them, they were working furiously. They must be on to something. We had to move, or they would take the prize.

Another hour into it, and I was about where I was the last time. I had to tear down some of my main program to make room for more recursive checks and buffer writes.

Damn it. I may not be able to pull this off.

Sanjay hovered worriedly, offering help to one or another of our team. A fellow programmer, Ivan, took him up on it, and the two of them began digging in. He was working on the GUI. That was going to be our window to the world. I glanced over the rest of us – two rows of five geeks, typing away. Well, almost all were. Mason sat there on the end, just staring at his screen.

“Mason? What's wrong,” I whispered.

“Nothing, man. Don't worry about it,” and he waved me off. So I just ignored him and kept on with what I was doing.

I heard some swearing a while later, and looked at the computer clock.

23 minutes left. I was just about done. I chanced another look over at Mason. He was staring, and then typing. Damn it. I looked for Sanjay, but he was still working with Ivan.

“Sanjay!” I said, and when he looked up, I pointed at Mason. “Help him?”

Sanjay glared at me, and said, “Don't worry about him. Finish yours.”

Feeling pissed off, I tried to calm myself and dig back in.

If Mason spoiled it for all of us, I will kick his ass later. I need to finish and save my project.

So I kept at it. Soon, the last algorithm strings were saved. I switched to the IDE, ran it, and it crashed. Not unusual, since it was version.001

I went back and tweaked, and fixed. Finally, it ran without crashing, and accepted a test transaction. Got it on the seventh try – hooray! I looked at the clock. Four minutes left. I looked up, and two other coders were staring at me. I raised my arms and gave the thumbs up. They grinned, and returned the sign.

I looked to the end of our table, at Mason. He was just sitting and looking at the monitor. Tears ran down his face. Sanjay finally looked up from Ivan's desk. They had just finished. He walked over to Mason's computer, and looked to see what the problem was.

Sanjay put a hand to his mouth, and said, “Oh my. Mason, what in the hell? What is the idea?”

Mason turned to him and said, “I was hacked. I did not do this. They hacked my desktop. I was trying to get rid of it...” He threw his arms up, and then finally ran from the room.

Theta group let out a big shout. They had all finished, and even completed a fully integrated product. The event organizer came in, and looking at his watch, yelled, “Times up everyone! Looks like Theta finished. How about the others?”

Omega finished too, and shouted. The organizer finally came over to us. “What happened here, guys? Looks like you were close.”

Sanjay said, “We almost finished too, but unfortunately someone cheated. Look, someone hacked one of our members machines,” and pointed to Mason's desktop screen. The organizer walked over, and stared at the image – a nude image of Mason himself. I figured he must have posted it somewhere on the net, and an unscrupulous person had found it. All it took was for them to telnet into Mason's machine while he was networked with the rest of us, and not paying attention. The image was enough to distract him, upset him out of even trying anymore.

The event organizer cleared his throat, and then announced in a loud voice,

“All right. We have a new bonus challenge for the 2014 hackathon. The winner of this one takes all. The loser is the one who sent that image to one of Sigma Team's computers. We begin now!”

Despite any lingering fatigue, I dug in with a vengeance.

The End

Humming our Appreciation

We sing a hymn to the Almighty,

our voices coalescing around a tune,
some ahead, some behind, the sound confused
chasing itself, indistinct yet flowing,
a common frail human
aspiration to betterment.

Some of us are here, sitting in church,

young and old, rich and poor, man and woman,
Dressed-up children squirm and fidget.
But everyone is here, united in this hour
towards a higher attainment.

Forgive us, heavenly father,

for we are imperfect
yet aspire to be better.
Do not read our dirty minds,
just honor our sincere intent.

We know what we want

fantasize in many directions,
yet still know that we can
do better than our usual
expression of all appetites.

Help us along –

we are ever grateful,
your warped children,
whom you made and
always have to forgive.
Oh, and hey, thanks a lot.

 - end

Act Two

     So now we have another Cold War. It seemed to spring up so fast, relatively speaking. One minute everyone was going to the Sochi Olympics, and the next we are facing off in the Ukraine. It is dizzying, how fast things can deteriorate. Makes one wonder if everyone has been watching too many episodes of some battle epic, or playing too many violent video games. Has everyone forgotten how expensive and dangerous a real war is?

      I was leafing through an old Time Magazine picture book of World War II today, and it really hit home just how all-encompassing a true world war can be. Families separated, never to be re-united. Young men, boys dying on distant fields for some ridiculous reason. A man who was saving scrap metal on his farm had it confiscated by the military. If you were the wrong race you were confined in camps (in the US) or gassed or worked to death (in Germany). Everyone was affected in countless ways, not to mention around 30 million dead. And this in a mostly pre-nuclear time, with conventional weapons (except for Japan at the close).

     Now the US and Russia still have many hundreds of nuclear missiles, and probably thousands of warheads. Enough to turn the world into a wasteland that would not sustain human life. These new leaders who have no memory of what a truly devastating war was like should think long and hard before starting a new one. There is no reason, religious, political or economic – no reason whatsoever for the destruction of all we know. No reason to destroy human civilization. Especially now when we are on the threshold of moving out into our solar system and enjoying a far greater bounty. Like many a stupid schoolyard fight, it doesn't matter how it started. It is time to put a stop to this nonsense, before it gets out of hand. The sooner the better. Thanks for reading.

The real zombies are here

Just think, a zombie you can chat with,

conversant with answers from the past.
They remember way back when our
present was created in various laboratories.

If you befriend one, they might even

buy you lunch or dinner, take you to
a movie, and sit through it without
asking if they can eat your brains.

Some of these zombies are parents,

grandparents or great-uncles.
They are also called by another name:
Baby Boomers –

– when long ago, they

were bright-eyed flaxen-haired youth,
wild and free and rebellious and creative.
Cars were made just for them, and they
generated mass movements and social changes:
a radical departure from anything seen before.

Befriend a living zombie today,

you might be surprised at how
much you enjoy their company.

 - end

 

That special time of year

The freezing mark stands firm,

no longer penetrated by temps;
Fragrant ground with active worms,
fertile for new plants to be set in.

Good Friday and time to plant potatoes,

onions and get ready for May tomatoes.
Grass greens up in anticipation of flocks
of violets and dandelions, a color tornado.

How high do I set my ambition this year,

when I would like to do a whole vegetable garden?
My time and bodily strength I hold dear,
So maybe I'll just settle for a row of zinnias.

The mowing and weeding are just around the corner,

so I may as well enjoy this honeymoon of mid-spring;
Yard yields up bright surprises, defying lingering winter.
Hikes in the woods reveal mysterious flowering things.

By the time summers drudgery arrives,

my garden will be well established.
Time for travel and long car rides,
Welcomed back by a garden that thrives...

...on inattention and a few lucky rainstorms.

Happy Springtime and Easter all.

A cultural phenomenon

Phasers on stun, full speed ahead,

Klingons off the port bow,
Torpedoes away! Direct hit!
Their weapons systems are disabled.
Their propulsion nacelles are destroyed.
They are dead in the water, Captain!

Before there ever was a Jim Kirk,

Spock, Scotty or McCoy;
There existed another fine crew,
Archer, T'pol, Mayweather. Tucker and Tripp
All flew the very first Enterprise.

The NX-01 broke through many boundaries,

cleared a path at an amazing Warp Five –
With rudimentary high-tech weaponry,
this crew held off many hostiles, and stayed alive.

Discovering many wondrous things,

Fighting various threats unforeseen,
As far as the warp engines could fling
the ship, much knowledge was gleaned.

Finally defeating the Xindi schemers,

The crew set the entire Timeline right;
With a final few pesky threats eliminated,
the NX-01 helped create the Federation.

Archer saved the planet, and went out a hero,

Kirk merely built on his enduring legacy.
Those other captains were shirttail hangers-on,
important in their time perhaps.
But Archer and the First Enterprise
Were the equal of Zephram Cockran.
Giants in their time.

(Just an ephemeral trekking muse for today –

I may change my mind after the next movie.)

-end

sci link of the day

here you go:   

http://www.hightechscience.org/funfacts.htm

Brought to you by the author of this:  www.createspace.com/4281639 

Have a nice day.

What If

Our entire existence,

from the big bang to a future final whimper,
was nothing more than a school experiment?
Creation in one day, cessation in the next.

Some student makes fine adjustments,

compacts just the right particle mix,
applies trillions of Earth gravities...
Then drops the thing into a black bottle,
releasing the energy while observing intently.

The birth and death, destruction, loss,

cruelty, unjust travesty, disease, tragedy
all carefully studied and categorized.
Was it adequate for the assignment?
Would the teacher take points off for
happiness, serendipity, and good fortune?
Or add them for those same qualities.

We'll never know, as poof

goes our world – beyond our control.
But we can imagine such things.

So someone got a good grade that day...

Someday it may be us taking the test.

Sure hope we get it right!

To celebrate the Red Moon

Here is a link to some basic science facts, with supporting hyperlinks, in celebration of our recent eclipse, or 'Red Moon'

http://www.x-raytechnicianschools.org/50-simple-science-facts-everyone-should-know-but-doesnt/

Enjoy!