HCI - An industrial view on life

Today I am 26.

( Four years ago, my philosophy wore out. )

( Three years ago, I gave up on life. )

( Two years ago, I got a job. )

( One year ago I almost broke even financially. )

( Nine months ago I got a motorcycle. )

( Last month was my first month without fear. )

But today, I find myself here. I am still idling when there's so much to do. So much to write and design and test and explore. Not to mention a lifetime of loneliness I need to get on about avoiding. And when I work it out, I'm not sure I have enough life left to get it all done.

But I guess I may as well try. Nothing else better to do.

Protip: If you read the words "quantum tunneling" in a sentence explaining how someone broke the speed of light, someone's trying to hoodwink you.

Quantum tunneling does not imply that space was traversed.  In fact, everything quanta starts from the principles from discontinuity.  That object did NOT travel through space faster than the speed of light, because it did not travel through space.  That's quantum tunneling, got it memorized?

I came home, and then fell asleep in front of my computer.  Normal sleep pattern it ain't, and I'm not sure how to fix it.  I feel locked in the rhythm from last week, which means I'm tired all day and up all night.  But now, I'm out at 6pm and up by midnight.  Worse yet, I may not want to fix it, as I'm not really sure when I'll have to do something wacky like that again.

And the dreams.  I can always tell when I'm undergoing a shift when I remember fragments of dreams and have to sort out the memories.  Otherwise, I may actually forget that I never needed to worry about the report I failed to do.  Blasted subconscious almost never gives me happy dreams flying in the clouds.  It's all work, troubleshooting, and physically accurate aerodynamics.  Never any magic.

Oh, and acid reflux.  I have to clear my throat a lot, and the coughing hurts.  Sadly, I only left the antacids in my desk.  Whoops.

I am sincerely saddened to note I am a part of the problem.  I am an intellectual, and I have forgotten the macroeconomics I had once known.  Dr. Krugman brought this painfully to my attention.  Were the graphs really that simple?  Was the reasoning really so straightforward?  Surely this can't help explain the quagmire that we're beset to decode every time we listen to the news...

But yep, that's it.  In fact, I think someone in my high school AP Macroeconomics class even asked the stupid question about what happens when the interest rate goes negative.  Ahh, youthful naivete, I miss you.

I own a DVD player.  I have purchased software capable of playing DVDs, including the DVD codec package.  I have legally rented a DVD.

So why the crap is it's stupid encoding causing the blasted thing to crash?  I *could* just skip over the frames that appear to be randomly encrypted, but then I'd have to be psychic instead of relaxing.  It's stupid crap like this that drive people to hacking...

Watching Doctor Who season 4, the best line so far - as side from the classic "Sometimes everyone lives" is "... and this is to combat dehydration."

The line, and the glass of water offered, is so ordinary as to make the entire event even more surreal.  THAT is the kind of writing I watch this show for.

Braid is available for not-a-console!  The Last Guardian!  Ninokuni!

*Flails arms and start gibbering*

I can't figure out how I'm so far out of touch with these things (though I did know about the Ghibli game).  Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to work on my Blender script for exporting to OpenFOAM.

Star Trek: The Reboot is really good. As in I am hard-pressed to find anything I disliked about it (Above Iron Man, comparable to Serenity). I'll have to see it again this weekend. As usual, it's the details that make it more than a mere blockbuster sell-out. Look closely at the phasers. Read the warning labels. Note that the nuclear reactor onboard actually has radiation labels. The main screen is a window with a HUD. Spot the plumbing (seriously, the Enterprise doesn't just materialize water at the destination!). Watch the keyboards on the wall consoles fold up. Some of the levels are (far) bigger than 2 stories. There are work crews everywhere - real laborers in uniform. It's upkept, but not pristine. The ship has guns - plenty of them. And they all go "pew-pew". In fact, the sound effects were one of my favorite parts.

Simply glorious.

If we're really good and behave ourselves, we may even get a TV show out of it. Even at a lower production value, it would still be fantastic.

When you hear people throwing out the term 'reboot', keep in mind that what the word actually means is 're-boot-strapping'. Or, in other terms, 'lifting yourself up by the shoelaces again'. Keep in mind that most people don't know how impossible that really is (or even what it means), and please keep in mind that we've already done it a few times. There are some who use the word properly; watch them - they've got some serious !@#% to show us.

We'll no doubt reboot the internet. We will undoubtedly reboot the economy. The powergrid. The transportation system. What it means to be human... eventually, perhaps.

Rebooting is just that razor's edge on the transition from one phase to another. You can't be ready for it, but watch for when it hits. If we're lucky, we'll live through it and see something interesting. Maybe even impossible.

I just realized it was Friday... I was off by one day almost all week.