Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Brave New World, Connections, Expert systems, Humor, MetaFilter, New Horizons, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, tech | Tags: augmented reality, blogging, book conservation, gizmag, humor, jim downey, Loz Blain, NSFW, predictions, RealTouch, reviews, science, Science Fiction, sex, technology
I should be working in the bindery. Really.
But I came in here to send an email, then paused to check MetaFilter, and saw something which scared me. Something not exactly safe for work.
So of course, I had to share.
Welcome to the future:
That’s the business end of a, um, male sex toy.
Yeah.
And if that isn’t scary enough, here’s this bit from the actual tech article:
It also occurs to me that as amazing an experience as it is, it might be even better, in a purely physical sense, if I was given full control over it – maybe even just a series of different patterns like most girls’ vibrators have. I bring the idea up with RealTouch Director of Sales, Scott Rinaldo, and he tells me that a plan to open-source the development of third party apps is already up and running.
What could possibly go wrong?
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Brave New World, Connections, Harry Potter, Humor, J. K. Rowling, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, tech, YouTube | Tags: blogging, Harry Potter, humor, jim downey, literature, predictions, quadrocopter, Quidditch, science, Science Fiction, technology, video, www youtube
OK, that last post kinda churned around in my head a bit, reminded me of something else having to do with robotics.
I didn’t post anything about this a week ago when it made the rounds, but check it out:
The ability to toss a pole back and forth like that, while flying, is pretty cool. And I bet if they can do that, then tossing a ball back and forth would also be possible — if not now, then in the very near future.
So, what I want to know is: when is someone going to come up with an honest-to-God game of “Quadrocopter Quidditch”? Should be eminently doable.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Connections, DARPA, Guns, H. G. Wells, Mars, Music, Paleo-Future, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, tech, YouTube | Tags: blogging, DARPA, H.G. Wells, Jeff Wayne, jim downey, laser, literature, Martians, music, predictions, science, Science Fiction, technology, Thunderchild, War of the Worlds, www youtube
A news item you may have seen:
Fighter jets to be fitted with laser weapons for 2014
Very soon the U.S. Military will be fitting some of their fighter jets with real laser weapons. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) says that the new laser system will be fitted onto jet aircraft in 2014 as a defensive weapon capable of knocking out missiles and other projectiles while in flight.
If you’ve been waiting for the future to finally get here, just go ahead and mark your calendar for 2014. It was recently announced that the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) would be retrofitting some U.S. military jets with actual 150KW lasers that will be able to knock missiles out of the sky.
The new laser weapons are part of DARPA’s High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System and are purportedly being fitted as a defensive measure specifically for knocking projectiles out of the sky such as surface-to-air missiles or any type of larger projectile. The exact specifics of the system’s capability are still classified.
This may … ring a bell:
Forthwith flashes of actual flame, a bright glare leaping from one to another, sprang from the scattered group of men. It was as if some invisible jet impinged upon them and flashed into white flame. It was as if each man were suddenly and momentarily turned to fire.
Then, by the light of their own destruction, I saw them staggering and falling, and their supporters turning to run.
I stood staring, not as yet realizing that this was death leaping from man to man in that little distant crowd. All I felt was that it was something very strange. An almost noiseless and blinding flash of light, and a man fell head-long and lay still; and as the unseen shaft of heat passed over them, pine-trees burst into fire, and every dry furze-bush became with one dull thud a mass of flames. And far away towards Knaphill I saw the flashes of trees and hedges and wooden buildings suddenly set alight.
It was sweeping round swiftly and steadily, this flaming death, this invisible, inevitable sword of heat.
Small wonder that I’ve had this song kicking around in my head, from what is probably a largely-forgotten concept album 35 years old.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Art, Augmented Reality, Comics, Connections, Humor, Kindle, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, tech, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, augmented reality, blogging, Communion of Dreams, Danielle Corsetto, Darnell Sidwell, direct publishing, Girls With Slingshots, humor, jim downey, Kindle, promotion, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, technology, Tweet, Twitter, writing
Lots of fictional characters have Twitter accounts — usually, one created by a fan to have a little fun. Well, the idea* occurred to me today to set up an account for Darnell Sidwell, who is the main character of St. Cybi’s Well.
If you’ve read Communion of Dreams (and if you haven’t, why not? I mean, seriously, go read the damned thing.) you know Darnell as the crusty old prospector with a colorful history. St. Cybi’s Well is the start of his story (OK, not really — he’s already middle-aged — but for our purposes it is), and you get to meet a man who is 40 years younger with a lot of changes ahead of him. Personally, I love the character, even if I’m going to put him through hell in this book.
Anyway. St. Cybi’s Well is not being written from Darnell’s perspective. Rather, like Communion of Dreams, it is written from a third-person narrator’s perspective.
But the Tweets are going to come directly from Darnell, from his perspective. He’ll be writing about his thoughts and experiences as the story of St. Cybi’s Well unfolds. Sometimes there will be hints about the story. Sometimes he’ll give away some insights. Sometimes he’ll (unintentionally) mislead, because he won’t understand exactly what is going on in the bigger picture.
This will be fun — and somewhat useful for me, since it is always a good thing for a writer to completely get inside the head of a character, to understand how they view the world. To a certain degree I go through this exercise with any major character, but this will be a way I can share some of that process. When all is said and done, it will form something of a supplement to the novel, and I’ll probably figure out a way to have those Tweets collected/linked in the final version. In the meantime, you can ‘follow’ him @DarnellSidwell, and we’ll put up batches of Tweets on the St. Cybi’s Well site. He’ll probably Tweet every day or two, as my schedule allows.
Now I need to get back to work. Toodles!
Jim Downey
*Credit where it is due: this idea came to me when reading today’s Girls With Slingshots strip — note the ‘hover text’.
Filed under: Feedback, Health, Predictions, Publishing, Science Fiction, tech, Travel, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, direct publishing, jim downey, predictions, Science Fiction, Scrivener, St. Cybi's Well, technology, travel, Wales, writing
I haven’t been doing a lot of blogging the last couple of weeks. Partially, that was due to my having actually come down with the actual flu — and getting that shortly after I had finally gotten rid of the last vestiges of the previous illness really sorta sucked my energy level down.
But there was another reason: I’ve been writing St. Cybi’s Well.
Well, kinda. Kinda-sorta.
See, I’m using Scrivener. Which I like a lot, but which is completely different from my previous work habits in writing a book. In an odd way, it’s more comprehensive, more systematic. I’m still learning how to use it, and it is taking some fumbling around and a bit of mental re-organization to get the hang of it. But rather than just having an outline and building one chapter after another, I find I’ve been constructing a framework and then working on individual scenes scattered through different chapters. By the time I finish with St. Cybi’s Well I’ll really understand how to use these tools efficiently, and hopefully that will mean more books, sooner, after this one. We’ll see.
Anyway.
I hope to have some solid things to share in a month or so. But in the meantime, I would invite you to browse my 2003 and 2006 travelogues of trips to Wales. You’ll get a pretty good glimpse into the locations and descriptive language for St. Cybi’s Well, since I am basing a lot of the book on those very real experiences. Consider it something of a sneak preview, just because you read the blog.
And thanks for that, by the way. It’s good to know I’m not just talking to myself here.
Cheers.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Astronomy, NASA, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Space, tech, YouTube | Tags: art, Communion of Dreams, jim downey, laser, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mona Lisa, Moon, NASA, predictions, science, Science Fiction, space, technology, video, www youtube
I don’t want to reveal any spoilers, but here’s a passage from Chapter 15 of Communion of Dreams:
The moment the projector was set down and turned on, Jon could see what had them all so excited. There were flashes of light coming from the image of the ship, clearly directed back at the ASA.
“It’s brilliant. They’re using the point-defense lasers designed for clearing away debris in their path as strobes, to communicate with us,” said Gish.
Gregor nodded. “Yes, yes. Simple digital message, as fast as lasers can be switched on and off. Not designed for communications,so cannot transmit as much data as normal. But pretty good.”
Why do I mention this? Well, guess what’s just been done by NASA? Take a look:
Here’s an excerpt from the associated article:
NASA has turned the Mona Lisa into the first digital image to be transmitted via laser beam from Earth to a spacecraft in lunar orbit, nearly 240,000 miles away, thanks to a technology that may soon become routine.
The experiment took advantage of the laser-tracking system that’s in operation aboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been circling the moon for the past three and a half years. NASA sends regular laser pulses from the Next Generation Satellite Ranging station at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland to the space probe’s Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter, or LOLA, to measure its precise position in lunar orbit.
I love to see my predictions come true.
Jim Downey
With thanks to Wendy for sending me the article!
Filed under: Art, Book Conservation, Marketing, New Zealand, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction | Tags: art, blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, greenstone, jim downey, New Zealand, Pounamu, predictions, promotion, Science Fiction, technology
Remember this?
It’s a backwards book!
Well, after wrapping up the big conservation job last week, I promised myself I’d take some time this week after the holiday and do the rest of the edition. Here’s where I’m at as of this afternoon:
Gathered & folded.
Each stack there is one of the 11 sections of the book. That’s actually 16 copies, which is the edition of 15 (remember, one book is already done) plus two spares. I’ll “punch” the spares (poke holes in the section spines for sewing) but then stick them into storage as a reserve in case a copy is damaged before I can get it to the client. Collating and folding is probably the slowest part of the whole binding process.
One additional note — see that thing there in the lower right? It’s this:
Pounamu was highly prized by the Maori for use in making tools and weapons. For generations it was fashioned into chisels, axes, and adzes. While I very much appreciated the beauty of the many pieces of art I had seen created using Pounamu, for me the most memorable souvenir of the trip would be a bookbinding tool called a ‘folder’ made of greenstone. I didn’t expect to find one ready-made, but rather to find a piece of the stone which I could shape to my own use.
And I did. It’s about 5″ long, roughly an inch tall and an inch wide, slightly tapered towards the ends. One side is already highly polished, the others relatively smooth. I’ve already used it as is, and need to spend some more time with it before I decide whether it needs more shaping or not.
I’ve actually decided that the piece is perfect just as is for exactly this purpose: folding thick sections of new paper.
Tomorrow I’ll punch the sections and then start sewing the books.
Just thought I’d share that.
Jim Downey
PS: there are currently only 8 copies of this edition unclaimed. Full info here.
Communion Of Dreams 