Posted in Science Fiction on March 28, 2007 | No Comments »
Science fiction has always been hard to define. To the general public it has been typecast as space opera and anything to do with the future but that is not my definition of science fiction. I consider Star Wars one-hundred percent fantasy with not a single drop of science fiction in it. Just because a [...]
Posted in Computers, Information, Magazines, Television, Web on March 25, 2007 | 3 Comments »
Yesterday I sat down and read through the latest issue of Time Magazine. I am an information junky, but I don’t read magazines as much as I used too, not since the web. Reading the web is an exciting way to take in data – I can start with Slashdot and follow a link to [...]
Posted in Science Fiction on March 17, 2007 | No Comments »
I grew up reading science fiction and assumed adulthood would bring a career in science. It didn’t happen that way. In the last week I’ve bumbled across several current websites where people my age did grow up to become scientists and are discussing their formative reading. Jason Pontin, the editor in chief of Technology Review [...]
Posted in Programming on March 15, 2007 | No Comments »
Back in the seventies I became addicted to computer magazines. In the early sevenities I had studied computers, working with keypunch machines, greenbar paper and mainframes like the IBM 360, but then the microcomputer revolution burst on the scene and I fell in love Atari, Apple, Commodore, TI, Sinclair, Radio Shack and all the other [...]
Posted in Memory, Science Fiction, Space Travel on March 14, 2007 | No Comments »
Time was 1967 at Miami-Killian Senior High. Sitting at the freak table in the cafeteria during home room, while listening to complex improvised percussions of the black guys at their table pounding out Afro-identity-rhythms with their hands, elbows and feet, I read a small digest pulp magazine called Worlds of Tomorrow. I tried to [...]
Posted in Least Popular, Memory on March 13, 2007 | No Comments »
If you searched the net you can find plenty of writers riled up over The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s The Definitive 200 list of CDs they want you to own. Since I’m a list maker myself, see The Classics of Science Fiction, I like to think about preparing a good list. The Rock [...]
Posted in Computers, Global Warming, Philosophy on March 9, 2007 | 1 Comment »
Ever since I saw An Inconvenient Truth I’ve been pondering ways to do my part to use less carbon. Since I work with computers the first idea I had was to stop leaving my computers on 24-hours a day. That isn’t easy since at work I manage four servers and have two computers for programming. [...]
Posted in Global Warming, Philosophy, Science Fiction on March 8, 2007 | No Comments »
I just finished reading Timescape by Gregory Benford and Walden by Henry David Thoreau and the two books strike me as a perfect set for a meditation on time travel. I doubt Henry David Thoreau ever thought about time travel, but any writer that produces a classic book is communicating across time, sending messages [...]
Posted in Computers on March 7, 2007 | 1 Comment »
The World Wide Web has revolutionized reading and research but it has many deficiencies, one of which is the destruction of the page. People use the word “web page” but that really means a single web document referenced by a unique URL. A web page may consist of one or more screens depending on the [...]
