stay on target; stay on target

This Google Glass thing is pretty cool.

My first reaction, as with most technology, is laughter - I'm sort of built that way. What I realized about half-way through the ad is that we are essentially looking at applying the first-person shooter in video games (which I hate) to everyday life - and what we have is a world where video games have a beneficial effect on who we are, and what we do. (Video gamers claiming dexterity, computer skillz, and logic/reasoning abilities isn't anything I yet believe; okay, I'll change that - if your increased dexterity involves moving your fingers quickly within a five-inch space, then fine.)  What I do wonder about is the ability for people to essentially multi-task while doing whatever else they happen to need to focus on. Any type of HUD takes a considerable amount of training - older folks might struggle (see: mandolin playing, Todd), but yutes will no doubt adapt much quicker. I think back to trying to 'teach' multi-tasking in my AF career, and as often as not you can't teach it - they had it, or they didn't. Sort of like teaching 'speed' - can't be done. I shudder to think of people trying to use it while driving the car, walking, or even sitting in a chair. Also, I don't much care for the voice activation which will sound like hundreds of people talking to Sulu on from some distance planet.

"Glass, start recording. Stop recording. Crap, take a picture. Wait, turn left here? Glass, I'm lost..."

we are...

As not expected, we destroyed the 37-team pub quiz group of johnny-come-latelys last night. After our sterling performance three weeks ago (tied for 3rd), we stepped up and won for the first time last night: a four-point clearance over some of our archrivals (our archrivals; we are not their’s). It feels good. We feel strong. We’re just taking it one day at a time. Just like they say in South Bend: play like a champion today. Is this too much?

I must confess that I messed up three questions in the sports round, which ended up being our worst of the night – if we’d lost I would have hung my head in shame. (Who drafted Kobe Bryant? – Charlotte Hornets: I glitched and put the Memphis Grizzlies knowing full well they didn’t exist at the time, and I know it was Charlotte. Some 1990s darts champion was different than the rest because? Left handed: I wrote and then erased. What year was “the Catch” in the 49ers game: 1982 – my time was way off on that for some reason.) All easy enough questions…focus. Rabbit.

X was stellar all night: Kingfisher id’d, checked. Lena Horne, check. Sheryl Crow, check. Daniel Day-Lewis roles, check. Our third pulled Katie Couric and her colonoscopy out of, well, you know. Looking back, we had no right on at least 12 questions, but somehow managed to scrawl the right answers. I guess that’s how it works.

Here’s a new deal: playing C, D, and G on the mandolin is a piece of cake. Playing A or E is not. This might be an issue of old-man hands, but getting your pinkie and ring finger to cooperate isn’t so easy. I’ll have to contact my buddy, Buzz, and make sure he isn’t just rocking three chords on all his guitar songs. I question the reality behind his skills.

that's fine, scroll down

They say you only need one event to earn your fame; this is mine.

Imagine you have delivered this scroll (or roll) to your king. Suppose he mounts it on two barrels, one left and one right, and then decides to read it while you 'operate' the machinery. As he's reading the various requests from the kingdom next door, reading page on page, he says to you "scroll to the left". What does that mean? Did he just walk into your cubicle, look over your shoulder and say, "Scroll down. No. Down. Down, I mean up"? No, his kingship did not. You can easily see that regardless of the tool (or roll) you are using, the direction is clearly for you to move the paper/scroll to the left: scroll left. The scroll moves the direction he is telling you to move it. See? So, if you come into my cubicle and are reading the long article about the importance of blogging on my screen, please direct me to scroll up, not down, to get the comments section. The page is moving (scrolling) up. I know what you're thinking: what if I'm using the mouse wheel? What if I'm using the 'scroll' bar? You know what I'm thinking? Did you just read what I wrote? That's what I'm thinking. The document on the screen is still moving up. Scroll up. Just because the wheel is spinning down does not mean the action of the document is down. Moving the rectangle down on the 'scroll' bar isn't any different - the scrolling action is still up.

I rest.

Off with your head.

how'd it go?

A brief summary from our Pub Quiz on Monday evening. We were four once again and managed to hold our own for the evening. We weren't as sharp as two weeks ago when we finished a career-high 3rd place; this week was more an 8th place, or so. You might wonder what type of questions we see on the average Monday night so I'll give you a few. One of the rounds is a picture round - a separate sheet of paper with 10 color photos and questions. Here are three from the other night:

Name the Person _______________

Name the Player _______________

Name the Animal _______________

Do you feel caught up?

P.S. We did manage to get two of these three correct.

it's really nothing

X flew out to the great Northwest over the weekend to visit a dear friend and family. From what I gathered at the pick-up this morning (and our hookey playing for a long breakfast), everything went swimmingly.

I manned the fort for four days and no one seemed worse for wear. I did finally finish painting the living room ceiling - though I'd prefer a platfrom to lie down upon, like Michalangelo - but you can't have everything. The finished ceiling is also courtesy of Green Day, who kept me going through three full rounds of Uno!. You wouldn't imagine Billie Joe painting ceilings, but he's not a bad sidekick.

I decided on Saturday morning to make a big pot of Brunswick Stew for dinner - who doesn't want to shop for smoked ham hocks? If you don't know of The Stew, here's the background:

1. Came from Virginia
2. Or, came from South Carolina
3. Has a bunch of southern ingredents in it

You're welcome, I saved you this step.

Ham hocks, whole chicken, onions, corn, tomato sauce, tomatoes, okra, potatoes, chicken stock, Worchestshire, hot sauce, seasonings, and cooking.

What I really needed was a huge cast iron kettle/pot that I could hang from some sort of tripod over a fire in the front yard. As it was, I managed with soup pots on the stove. I should have done some cornbread, but we made due with fresh dinner rolls from Wegman's. The kids ate. They are ate-n again tonight as the adults (one very tired one) expose themselves to the (normal) failure of Quiz Night.

On Saturday I visited a therapeutic massage school near the house. They have a four-month, full-time program that my vet benefits will pay for (much like my culinary training). I think I might give it a go in September. I don't want to do it as a career, but X can get unlimited massages. What a deal, right?

I have nothing more to give...

t

one week

I suspected.

Listen, as I've often said to many, and for the few, that no kid has ever uttered the phrase, "I can't believe my parents made me learn to play music." Never. Of course, as a kid I wasn't aware of this wisdom; even if I were, I wouldn't have cared. Kids are kids - either you loved to play music or you didn't. It's been only a single week, I've practiced every day, I've learned my first scale, my first chords, my first song. There is nothing in this world that is so sweet as making music. So far, it's a grand idea, and I'm so very happy I took the step and discarded any embarrassment I might feel for learning something so 'late' in life.

Man, the Barenaked Ladies are about fun.

Love to all.

drifting

I've been sitting on this one for awhile. Well, not sitting so much as forgetting to ply my reader(s) with stories. This was in the NYTimes about a month ago and is easily the coolest story I've read in the last year. Any number of hooks get me: adventure, awe at how far they flew, the technology and skill involved, the freedom of the sky, and the final compeition unfolding before our eyes. The idea that one last 'lift' will get you there seems surreal. Great, great story. The Times also has a bunch of photos and interactive features that I didn't have as I read the newsprint version on my couch that Sunday morning.

smoke up, johnny

This is a short ramble, but I'm curious. It's been touted many a time that video games have been shown to have no effect on kids' headmeat. I'm going to play along for a bit, because I'm pretty sure that this:

actually had very little mental effect on my brain as I wasted my early-1980s youth playing quarters, Frogger, and chasing high school drawers.

What about now? Based on some minimal research on the Web, the first real first-person shooting (FPS) game that was fully functional was Wolfenstein (1992). From that point until about 2004, FPS games were almost exclusively PC or Apple OS based; in about 2004 (or so) the re-birth of the home gaming console came to pass and Halo (2004) and Call of Duty (2005) began the onslaught of FPS games. Also, remember that  in the 1990s and early 2000s the limitationson on computers in a house that Little Johnny could play shoot 'em up: Either by capability, or the fact that you weren't letting that little bastard on your $4,000 Pentium. Any studies from the past that cite the nil effect of video games on kids can be disguarded - for the simple reason that they don't take into account the FPS genre and ubiquity.

Let's do some math - if I assume that the kids we might be concerned with are those that are now 7 (like the kid so proudly describing his FPS shooter love and skills at the barbershop the other week, while his mother looked on proudly); and generally, those more likely to have been born between 1995 and 2005. All of them range in age from 7 - 18 and it's impossible to even comprehend how FPS games affect them. We can't possibly know, can we? It's all well and good to say that Missile Command, Tetris, and Galaga had no ill mental effects on me (even if they did make me delay my homework or chores), but to move that data forward and say that this current 7 - 18 crowd isn't being mangled at least a bit is crazy. The idea that kids can be the shooter, can see all the blood and gore, can have missions that never end, and the the fact that they never 'die' probably puts an illusionary tilt on their psychology. So, your kid claims they understand the difference? Are you sure? Probably. I suspect that around 2023 we'll see studies that show a massive, violent influence on the kids that grew up playing these games.

I knew the difference between reality and games when I was young. I knew I wasn't a frog. I never came upon a giant monkey rolling barrels at me. Those game weren't actual things that happen in life.

another brick

I've been doing some searching online for bricklayers' training and/or skills - anyone got anything? This goes back to the "I'm going to build a wood-burning brick oven in the backyard this summer" entry. I've found quite a few folks who have posted plans online for ovens that they've completed so I feel like I can parlay at least a few of those into an appropriate size and shape. I think the actual brick working is going to be the test. Does one build a mini-brickwall (like 4 x 2) to practice the skills? As I was blathering on about this a few weeks ago, X immediately piped up with, "You can't use my bricks!" My readers may wonder what kind of person would, first, get all dib-sy on bricks, and second, have 1,000 brick laying about the place. I can tell you - she lives here. Those above are her bricks, dammit. Fine, I'll get my own bricks. Better bricks; manly bricks.

The 51 went to down to the nearly abandoned Eastern Market on Sunday; the vendors tend to take the few cold months off after Christmas to recover, so it wasn’t unexpected. I did get some Peregrine coffee (I was out of my coffee at home), we stocked up on cheese at the monger for pizza night, and we visited one of our favorite used bookshops on Capitol Hill. I actually had a book in mind, Leviathan by Hobbes, for a book club (they don’t stock it at actual bookstores – who wants it?), so I figured the compact philosophy aisle might prove fruitful. It did. L. grabbed a copy of The Silmarillion on the way out: I think we win a prize for the two densest paperbacks bought at one time. A little light reading at the Court. We actually saw The Hobbit for a Saturday matinee, and L. is in a Tolkien class this term, so that purchase at least some sense. I haven’t yet seen the previews for the Leviathan movie. Is Brad Pitt going to play him?

I had my first mando lesson on Saturday, and confessed to my complete lack of instrumental knowledge – and shitty 12 year-old practice skills on the piano. The teacher is pretty cool and I’m now set-up with my opening pile of stuff needed to excel. I’m working my G-scales this week while focusing on the G, C, and D chords – my finger tips are sore, and my elbow is sore. What is the price to pay for learning a string instrument? As I was practicing yesterday Lemon was on the bed in the room and immediately strolled closer to me in my chair, laid down, stared at me, and seemed to enjoy the musical sounds. This is why she’s my cat…dedication