Mind Mapping

Mind mapping is a concept that I recently stumbled upon on the web that I wished I had learned during my K-12 imprisonment.  I have a wandering mind, with a poor memory, that finds it hard to hold the big picture on any subject, so it was exciting to come across this concept.  Because a [...]

Saving Money on Cable TV and Internet

We pay $163 for cable TV and high speed internet service.  That bothers me, because, for every month we pay $163 now, it means one month we won’t have $163 after we retire.  When my wife and I get too old to work and only have a fixed income, we will probably wish for all [...]

Kindle DX versus Netbook as Textbook

The holy grail of ebook visionaries is the electronic textbook.  Textbooks are huge, heavy and expensive and some poor school kids carry more weight on their backs than soldiers on a march.  It’s as common to see backpack humps on college kids backs as seeing cell phones in their hands.  Ebook promoters see dollar signs [...]

Predicting Technological Change

In the last few days I’ve helped many people set up their new iPhones with the campus Exchange server and wireless registration.  I can’t even count how many people I know now that have an iPhone, but they tend to be young, but not always.  I don’t own an iPhone myself, but I do have [...]

My Life on a Hard Drive

I wanted to call this essay, “My Life on a Terabyte Drive” because it sounded cooler and more specific, but then I’m thinking about buying a netbook and they only come with 160 gigabytes of hard drive space, something less glamorous to say in a title.  I can’t even fit my music collection on that, [...]

LG BD390 Blu-Ray Player Part 2

I’ve had my LG Blu-Ray player for ten days now, and I’m learning a lot about this specific player, and Blu-Ray players in general.  I had been waiting for the price of a Blu-Ray machine to fall below $200 before buying, which it had, but I ended up spending $150 more for my player because [...]

Better Than Television

Will there ever be a better invention than television?
Of course I hear all the young Internet dudes instantly reply, sex.  Really, and how many hours have you spent humping compared to boob tube dazing?  And by the way, I count video games and porn as byproducts of the invention of television.  Television is powerful.  It’s [...]

Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku

Every science fiction fan should read Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku.  Kaku surveys all the famous concepts of science fiction, often referencing when he first encountered the idea in famous science fiction books, movies and television shows.  With each idea, aliens, starships, light sabers, death rays, robots, and so on, Kaku sets the [...]

Science Fiction in My Lifetime

When I wrote this title I intended it be about science fictional predictions coming true in my lifetime, and especially what might still happen before I die.  Then I realized it could also imply I was writing about the great science fictional books that came out in my lifetime, leaving me room to speculate on [...]

Random Blog Reading

A couple weeks ago I noticed that Auxiliary Memory was getting a bump in hits and discovered the reason:  AlphaInventions.com.  This site, the invention of Cheru Jackson was designed to randomly show blogs from around the world, and promote blog reading.  If you visit AlphaInventions you can sit and watch a new blog pop up [...]