Randy’s Blog

Six or seven years ago I came across a blog post talking about the best contemporary science fiction books. One thing it said was if you want to see what life will be like in 2025, read Rainbows End, the new book by Vernor Vinge. Part of the plot deals with a man who suffered from Alzheimer's for 20 years, but is brought back to reality when a cure is discovered in the 2020s. He tries to cope with dizzying technological changes as he integrates back into society.

I've been amazed how many times, in the years since reading the book, I've heard about some new bit of technology, and thought "yup, that was in Rainbows End." Here are a few of those things I can remember:

Driver-less cars

It amazes me how real these are getting. Google has test driven self-driving cars thousands of miles in major cities in California, and laws are being worked on in several states to allow them for normal use.

Computerized contact lenses

In the book, contact lenses can overlay information on your field of vision, or, more spectacularly, alter what you see in real-time. For example, instead of looking at cars driving down the road, you can see dragons flying in formation. This is still a long way off, but I've seen news stories every so often about research into computerized contact lenses, and Google Glass is a step in this direction.

Wearable computers

In the book, clothes are wired into your contact lens computers. Shrugging a shoulder, or some other subtle movement, allows you to manipulate the data shown by your lenses. These days, smart-watches, which are linked to your smartphone, are a step in this direction.

Friends of Privacy

Lastly, in the book there was an organization called Friends of Privacy that allowed information to be deleted from the internet. The past few weeks, this very topic has been in the news, with Google removing search results from its index due to the European "right to be forgotten" law.

There were many, many other technological predictions in the book, some of which I only vaguely understood, and some I'm sure I've forgotten. Overall, the book's plot was good, not great. The best parts by far were the descriptions of near-future technology.

And I should point out that Vernor Vinge has a history of accurate predictions. In the late 1970's, he wrote a short story called True Names, which foresaw the rise of the internet and virtual reality. It became a cult classic, influencing many computer scientists and programmers. It's one of the best stories I've ever read.

Recently I read this article about "The Hum", a mysterious, persistent, dull noise some people claim to hear in certain parts of the world. The third paragraph caught my attention:

Exasperated, MacPherson turned his focus to scientific literature and pored over reports of the mysterious noise before coming across an article by University of Oklahoma geophysicist David Deming in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, a peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to exploring topics outside of mainstream science. "I almost dropped my laptop," says MacPherson. "I was sure that I was hearing the Hum."

My first thought was "Hey, an OU professor!" My second thought was "How have I never heard of this journal before?!?" It sounds exactly like the kind of thing I'm interested in! I quickly found the journal's website, and a few minutes of looking around confirmed it. It's basically scientific research into "X-Files"-like topics. So I mentally filed it away and decided to take an even closer look sometime later.

The very next day, on an unrelated website, I read an article about researchers trying to find time travelers:

What Happened When We Tried To Publish a Real Paper Investigating Time Travel

They searched the web looking for people mentioning Pope Francis before he became Pope, or comet ISON before it was discovered. Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, they found nothing. As the title implies, most of the article was actually about how the researcher couldn't get his paper published in any academic journals (although he was easily able to sell movie rights). However, the very first comment was from someone saying the Journal of Scientific Exploration was created for exactly this type of paper!

That made two references in two days, and pretty much sealed the deal. I signed up for an Associate Membership, paid my dues, setup an account, and now I'm in. I just wish I'd known about this journal years ago!

On Wednesday we had an HVAC company come by for a routine inspection of our air conditioner. When he was done, the guy (who was by far the friendliest maintenance person I've encountered) went over all the operating stats about our unit: pressure levels, temperatures, airflow, fan speed, system BTU, percent efficiency, amps, capacitors, etc. The takeaway was that our unit is operating almost perfectly across the board. He said he was impressed with how well it was running. Sweet. 

He also convinced me to sign up for their club membership. Normally I decline, but rates went up and the membership now saves a decent chunk of money, rather than the small fraction it used to be. He left, and I felt good about our A/C and fairly pleased that I was now saving money.

Then, Saturday night, the A/C stopped working. And it was just in time for a heat wave: this weekend was the first in nearly 2 years to have back-to-back predicted highs in the 90s. The temp in our house was in the low 80s and only going up. So at 8pm on Saturday I called the HVAC company again. I explained the A/C had just gotten a clean bill of health, and that I was a member of "the club." Fourty-five minutes later a different repair guy was at our house, working in the dark to find the problem.

And within a half hour, he had found it: a bug. Specifically, an earwig. It had the gall to crawl into an electrical switch in our perfectly fine A/C, and was crushed when the unit tried to turn on. Its body then acted as an insulator that prevented electricity from flowing. Once it was removed, the A/C started up just fine. This was the first time such a thing had happened to us, but he said it has happened many times in his 20+ years on the job.

In the end, the dead earwig cost us $100.

A few days ago, while thinking about the awesome-ness of grand slams in baseball, I wondered if a player had ever hit two in a single game. A quick search pulled up an entire Wikipedia page devoted to the topic:

List of Major League Baseball hitters with two grand slams in one game

Here are a few highlights:

• 13 players have accomplished the feat.
• No one has ever hit more than two in a game.
• A St. Louis player hit two grand slams in the same inning! ('99, Fernando Tatis). He set a record for most RBIs in an inning (8).
• One pitcher has done it. He only hit two grand slams in his career, and they happened in the same game.
• One player hit grand slams on consecutive pitches, in the 5th and 6th innings.
• One player hit an additional home run in the game, finishing with 11 RBIs, an American League record.
• One player hit his grand slams from both sides of the plate.

The website baseball-almanac.com points out that this feat is really a team effort:

"One man may end up with all the glory (and RBIs), but without his teammates getting on, he just has two solo home runs."

Dave Winer is the guy who basically invented blogging. He's been writing his blog at scripting.com since the mid-90s. He also helped create RSS, which is possibly the greatest invention of the internet era (at the very least, it's my favorite). A few months back he suggested that people stopped blogging the past few years because blogging tools haven't gotten any better.

That thought has stuck with me ever since. I've been thinking about blogging again, but blogger.com just felt outdated. When Google shut down their RSS reader last year, some people suggested that blogger.com might be next, given how little it's been updated over the years, and how heavily Google+ is being promoted. That hasn't happened so far, but it gave me another reason to look elsewhere.

So I've been looking at blogging platforms recently, and I've discovered there are a lot out there. A few I've looked at include:

• Ghost
• Postagon
• Silvrback
• Roon
• Posthaven

I thought I would use Ghost, because it seems to be the up-and-coming blog software with the most traction. But, it's still in the very early stages, and it looks like themes need to be tweaked and re-tweaked with each new release. So I kept looking, and eventually settled on Posthaven. It's also a work-in-progress, but seems to be further along in some respects. It's simple and clean, and I like that comments are built-in, so I don't have to use a third-party comment system. And, it's a paid service ($5/month), which (I hope) gives it a slightly better chance of succeeding in the long run.

One other neat feature is that email subscriptions are also built-in. So if you want to get notified about new posts, look in the sidebar or at the bottom of the page for a sign-up feature.

Cheers!

11.80 miles along the Prairie Trail

Riding time: 1 hour 7 minutes

It was perfect weather. Sunny, blue skies, 75 degrees. I've logged 61 miles on the bike so far this year. I'd like to match last year's total of 155 miles, but I got a late start this year because of the winter that just wouldn't quit. So we shall see.