Diary of a Network Geek

I’m just a big kid.

No, not at heart.  I’m just a big kid.  Period.
I buy Nerf guns for myself.  *Fully automatic* Nerf guns.  And, yes, sometimes, I buy LEGO sets for myself.
I admire the guys who make super-cool original LEGO spaceships and post them on Flickr, but, for those of us with less skill, there are still some great sets we can get for, um, “dioramas”.  Yeah, yeah, that’s it.  As displays.  Definitely not toys which are certainly not played with while making “zoom zoom” sounds.  Nope.  Not at all….

Right, so, anyway, if you’re into that kind of thing, Gizmodo has some of the best new LEGO sets coming out this year.
And, if you’re just keeping your inner child a prisoner this Friday, go look anyway.  They’ll love you for it!

Frank Herbert is one of my favorite authors.

I read his masterpiece, [amazon_link id=”0441013597″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Dune[/amazon_link], in Junior High and proceeded to gobble up just about everything he wrote thereafter.  In fact, for several years, I re-read [amazon_link id=”0441013597″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Dune[/amazon_link] about every other year.  But, I’m not so fanatical about his work that I can’t appreciate a good parody.

Which brings me to the IO9.com supplied Goodnight, Dune.
Yes, it’s an adorable mashup of the science-fiction classic and [amazon_link id=”0060775858″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Goodnight, Moon[/amazon_link], the children’s book.

Hey, it’s Friday, go check it out and enjoy.

One of the many problems I’ve always had with the majority of science-fiction is space.

No, not outer space, but, rather, the space they use on spaceships and the like.  Something like the [amazon_link id=”1451621299″ target=”_blank” ]U.S.S. Enterprise[/amazon_link] is fantastic and fun, but, frankly wholly unrealistic in their use of available space on a star ship.  Those high ceilings and vast gardens are wonderful, but, really, they add so much mass to a deep space vessel  that I have to wonder if they’re really a good use of materials, not to mention the fuel to move it all and maintain it.
Even [amazon_link id=”B0036EH3UC” target=”_blank” ]Battlestar Galactica[/amazon_link] seems to have incredibly high ceilings for a military vessel.  I mean, compare it to, say, an aircraft carrier, or, perhaps more reasonably, a submarine.  Granted, modern submarines have vastly more space available to them than their predecessors from World War II, but, still, space is at a premium.

In our only actual space installation, the International Space Station, space is certainly at a premium.  Granted, it’s not something that we still seem to be spending a lot of money on to improve or expand or even replace or duplicate, but it is the only real off-planet installation we currently have.  As such, it’s all we have to use as a guide for how future space craft or space stations might use their space.  So, if you’re a science-fiction writer, a future or hopeful science-fiction writer, or even just a fan, you owe it to yourself to check out this tour of the ISS.  Trust me on this, it will be an “eye opener” for many people seeing it for the first time.

Also?  I think it’s incredibly cool that people are living in space, even in cramped quarters, even for relatively short periods of time.
We live in the future.

I’m a cheap bastard.

I love the idea of using spare parts to make something cool and new.  I especially love it if the spare parts make something that I wouldn’t normally be willing to spend money on having, even if it is cool.
Digital picture frames fall into that category for me.

Sure, I’m a photographer and I shoot digital, so a digital picture frame is an obvious bit of techno-lust for me, but, like I mentioned, I’m a cheap bastard.  Too cheap to get a digital picture frame just to show off my own work.  But, when I saw this article on Ikea Hackers about making a DIY digital picture frame from an old laptop and an Ikea frame, well, I had to share it with you all.
I’ve seen similar articles, but this one really looked better than the other ones.  And, I certainly like the finished product better.  Now, all I need to do is find an old, working, laptop!

Could you rebuild civilization?

No, seriously, could you?
Maybe I spend too much time on the fringes of political and economic thought and news, but I hear stories about how experts think we may be heading for disaster on a very large scale.  Food riots and oil shortages and barbarism just around the corner to listen to some of these more extreme pundits.  The collapse of civilization itself!
Well, what if that happened?  What would you do?  Could you organize people enough to rebuild civilization?  What would you need to make a small village prosperous enough to become the kernel that would grow into something we would recognize as civilization again?

Well, thankfully, I’m not the only one obsessed with answers to questions like this.  There are a bunch of engineers and other like-minded, clever folks who are putting together a DIY Civilization “Kit”, with open source plans for all the basic technologies that one might need to get a self-sufficient town working again.  It’s quite an ambitious project, but, I think one that is worthwhile.   Even if we never need it to rebuild society, it may prove a useful thought-experiment to help make independent towns in developing countries.
In any case, it’s an interesting project, I think, and worth a look.

Today is St. Valentine’s Day.

Normally, a day associate with love and romance and a complete imbalance of power in male-female relationships wherein the male of the species is required to present his pair-bonded mate, or potential mate, with a ridiculous display of conspicuous disposable income via dead foliage or high-calorie confectioneries.  And, no, I’m not bitter, thank you for asking.  I participated in this strange mating ritual for many years, spending untold amounts of my hard-earned money on the most gorgeous roses available in Houston, thanks to my ex-wife and the Rose Gallery.  (All kidding aside, they really are quite good and reasonably priced for the truly amazing roses that you’ll get from them on days like this.  For real.)

I, however, prefer to remember this day as the anniversary of when a fellow Chicagoan, Al Capone, rounded up seven of his closest buddies and gunned them down in the back alleys of the South Side of Chicago.  Yes, that’s right, I’m talking about the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre!  It was on this day, in 1929, that the rivalry between Bugs Moran and Al Capone reached its violent and bloody peak, leaving seven, bloody corpses in its wake, along with damaging both Moran’s North Side Gang and, ultimately, bringing so much attention to Capone from the FBI that it effectively ended his criminal career, as well.
Truly, a turning point in the criminal history of Chicago.

So, you all go out and have your romantic dinners and make cow-eyes at your object of desire, but, have yourself an extra bloody steak and remember how they used to celebrate this romantic holiday on the South Side in the old days.

No, really, go ahead and try.

It’s not quite as easy as science-fiction would have you believe.  Honest.  Don’t believe me?  Then head over to Extreme Planet Makeover and try for yourself.
The folks at NASA have brought us a pretty challenging, little game; make a planet habitable.
On the surface, that seems fairly straight-forward, but that’s only because we over-simplify just how miraculous it is that this happened on our own planet.  There’s actually a pretty narrow margin by which life becomes possible and taking an existing planet and forcing it into that margin is way, way harder than fans of science-fiction, like me, generally want to believe it is.
Go ahead and try the game yourself.  I think you’ll find it an eye-opening experience.

We live on a paradoxically robust and delicate world.
This place has existed for millions of years and “modern” humans have existed for just a few hundred thousand years.  This magnificent ball of dirt and rock has seen more kinds of life come and go than we can even imagine.  We tend to think of ourselves and the world as it is right now as “life”, but I firmly believe that life, in some form, will continue on even if we do the unthinkable and foul our own dwelling place to the point that we, as a species, can no longer inhabit it.  The Earth will continue and, I think, life in some form will, as well.
Though, we may no longer be here to see it.

Well, in any case, take a minute and go play the “game” at their site.  You may be surprised at just how big a miracle life on Earth is!  Besides, it’s Friday, so what else are you going to do?

This may cost me readers.

But, honestly, I think that’s okay.
I’ve never been shy about criticizing aspects of internationalism that I don’t like, like off-shoring call-center jobs.  But, on the other hand, I’m also not shy about reminding people that extremists give us a skewed view of a larger population.  I know there are people in the United States right now that think every Arab or Muslim is bad.  I disagree.  I think those people who claim to believe that they are all evil are simply ignorant of the rich and diverse culture that exists outside of their own small neighborhood.  I hope before those of my readers that may think that there is no such thing as a good Arab, or Muslim, follows the link I’m about to share and reads a little of what they find there before writing me off.

Some time ago, through various other blogs, I came across a link to Apex magazine’s 18th on-line issue.  The Arab/Muslim Issue.
I have to admit, I was intrigued.  For one thing, I don’t think I’ve read any recent fiction by anyone from that culture.  For another, Apex specializes in fantasy and science-fiction.
This is some brilliant work.
Go read “The Green Book” by Amal El-Mohtar, a story about a book possessed of a spirit that corrupts her reader.
Or, try “50 Fatwas for the Virtuous Vampire” by Pamela K. Taylor about a Muslim vampire trying to follow the Law of the Koran and stay pure.
Or, my favorite, “The Faithful Soldier, Prompted” by Saladin Ahmed about a soldier who’s combat implants talk to him with the voice of God Himself, perhaps.
There are more, but these three stories were masterful looks at a culture most of us don’t see.  They see myths reinterpreted in ways we may not have considered, or a future which may be all too possible.

Really, I joke around a lot on wasting time on a Friday, but these stories aren’t a waste of your time, I promise.
Go and read them.  Then think.
Thanks.

Yeah, you read that right.

It’s no secret that I love my digital camera.  Not quite enough to give it a name, like some photographers I know, but, still, I love the little fist-full of magic that lets me take amazingly detailed digital photographs.  I remember when my ex-wife got her digital camera, it was a big deal that it was something like 3-megapixels.  Now, my iPhone has a camera at least as good as that built into it!  The camera I use now is a 10 megapixel camera and that’s really just an entry-level DSLR, which is 3 years old.  The better cameras start at 20 megapixels and go up from there these days.  That, let me assure you, is capturing a lot of data.  We’ve come a long way in a short time.

But, researchers are working on cameras that make those look primitive.
According to Scientific American, DARPA researchers are experimenting with gigapixel cameras.  That’s over a billion pixels.  That’s like 333 times better resolution than an iPhone camera.  That, in short, is pretty amazing.  And, not only does the camera take amazing shots, but it looks amazing, too.  Check out the slideshow at Scientific American that shows the camera and a picture it’s taken.

There’s something to think about as you snap photos of your friends this weekend!

I love science-fiction and I love travel!

Okay, not really.  I actually kind of hate traveling now, thanks to Bin Laden and the TSA, but it would be the only way to see the locations of famous sci-fi films.  I tend to forget that Tatooine was filmed on location.  No, seriously!  All the Tatooine shots were filmed in Tunisia!  For real!
And you can check out a slideshow of a lucky thirteen well-known science fiction movie locations over at Salon.  They’ve got everything from [amazon_link id=”B001G7PX80″ target=”_blank” ]Planet of the Apes[/amazon_link] to [amazon_link id=”B000K15VSA” target=”_blank” ]Blade Runner[/amazon_link] to, yes, [amazon_link id=”B001EN71DG” target=”_blank” ]Star Wars[/amazon_link].

Oh, go ahead and look at the slideshow!  It’s Friday, what else were you doing?