NAPOWRIMO Day 15

On April 15, 2015April 3, 2018 By WinstonIn Enlightenment, NaPoWriMo, Poetry, Pop Culture, Society, TechnologyLeave a comment

We Are Cyberspace

A billion things, a billion more,
And still there’s more to see.
It’s anything to anyone,
the internet to me.

There’s superstars, there’s nobodies,
The famous and unknown.
It doesn’t matter who you are,
You’ll never be alone,

There’s legal things, illegal things,
Some things are in between.
There’s beauty there and ugliness,
And things best left unseen.

There’s toys and tools, shops and stores,
And galleries galore.
You think you’ve found your ultimate,
But wait there’s something more.

If social media’s your thing,
This place invented it.
And if you’re bored, want something new,
Just wait around a bit

A billion things, ten billion more,
Spread out in cyberspace.
A glimpse into the heart and soul,
Of this the human race.

Cheers, Winston.

Personal Poetry Challenge Day Forty-Two

On May 12, 2014 By WinstonIn Personal, Personal Poetry Writing Challenge, Poetry, Science, TechnologyLeave a comment

While I was at Comiccon, I had the opportunity to meet one of the Canadian candidates for the private sector mission to Mars. Talking him inspired this….

The Next Martians

A flaming pillar reaches up,
Another group has gone,
To meet the ship that they will take,
To push our species on.

They go to Mars will not come back,
There to live out their days.
That’s where their children will be born,
Or so the brochure says.

But there’s no guarantee of kids,
No guarantee of life.
But they had dreamed a better dream,
A world without strife.

They seek to build a world new,
A future home for man.
Success is never guaranteed,
At least they try to plan.

So wish them well those few brave souls,
Godspeed upon their trip.
We wish them well and wish them safe,
As through the void they zip.

Perhaps one day we’ll join them there,
More likely further on.
The second wave, the third and then,
A home beyond the dawn.

So look to them our future now,
Think now of what they give.
They leave the planet of their birth,
One day on Mars to live.

Cheers, Winston

Personal Poetry Challenge Day Thirty-Seven

On May 7, 2014 By WinstonIn Personal Poetry Writing Challenge, Poetry, Society, Technology, ValuesLeave a comment

I work in a cell phone store so I often hear about new tech is destroying people’s ability to communicate. This always makes me a little crazy. You see I grew up without even a phone. Trust me, I know a thing or two about living in a simpler time.

It’s Fear The Future

A lot of ink gets spilled these days,
‘Bout our pervasive tech.
Midst all the furor where’s the voice,
Just says, “Meh, what the heck.”

It’s not the end, it’s just begun,
Like every time before.
And as things change they stay the same,
And then they change some more.

Yet every time things change it seems,
Some lose themselves to fear.
No matter what the benefits,
Some just refuse to hear.

They close their ears and close their minds,
They just refuse to think.
Then when the world has passed them by,
They want to cause a stink.

But good old days were not that good,
Let’s not do that again.
I lived like that when I was young
Like now much more than then.

So just remember technophobes,
The tech is not to blame.
It’s what you do when you get it,
That messes up the game.

So when your teen insists on texts,
No matter how you hate.
Don’t think that this must mean the end,
Text back communicate.

Cheers, Winston

Job Well Done Microsoft

On November 2, 2012November 2, 2012 By WinstonIn Personal, Pop Culture, Technology, Uncategorized, Windows 8Leave a comment

So last month I got myself a new laptop. Nothing crazy, but a very nice mid-range AMD quad-core. It came with Windows 7 pre-installed. It also came with a voucher to get $25 off Windows 8. So I said what the heck, why not.

Now I’m just waiting for the install to complete. So far so good. The only thing it hates is my Bluetooth drivers so I’ll have to redo those when it finishes.

On a slightly peculiar side note, when it complained about the driver, and it did so in French. The rest of the installation is in English. Strange, but not any sort of disaster.

Now ten percent…… The wait continues.

Nearly an hour later, I’m now running Windows 8 on my laptop. YAY! I have to say, I like what I see so far. It’s a clever amalgam of Windows Phone OS with access to a more traditional PC desktop.

The Windows 8 interface consists of a set of large, colorful buttons/icons linking to a variety of pre-installed apps. That’s right, apps. Just like those things on everyone’s smart phones. So much like a smart phone in fact that additional ones can be had through Microsoft’s own app store.

In this lies the true innovation in this latest effort from the nice people at Redmond. They’ve beaten Apple to the punch by integrating their mobile and less mobile OS platforms to an unprecedented degree. iOS looks nothing like OSX Mountain Lion. I’ve yet to see a desktop Linux build that remotely resembles Android despite Google’s abortive Chrome desktop a few years back.

Microsoft took it the other way. Instead of trying to figure out how to strip down and shoehorn a desktop OS onto a phone, they built up their phone OS into something that could be useful on a notebook, net book or desktop. Along the way, achieved a couple of other really impressive feats. They lowered its hardware requirements and it’s base price.

It owes both of these achievements to its phone OS DNA. Phones have pretty wildly varied hardware specs. This means that your phone OS has to be able to work smoothly on as broad a hardware spectrum as possible. Hence Windows 8 minimum requirements of 1ghz processor, 2gb of ram and 20gbs of hard drive space. Pretty modest by today’s standards, or yesterday’s for that matter.

The other piece of phone DNA can be seen as either good news or bad depending on how you see it. That’s the idea of the app store. For years Windows has been jeeringly regarded as the epitome of bloatware. Packed with tons of useless items for which Microsoft demanded a ton of money whether you wanted them or not. Not so much anymore. You can still pay a ton of money (a little bit at a time) but now it’s up to you whether or not you get anything from their app store.

Personally I’m liking the new business model. Because I had recently purchased my laptop, I was able to do my upgrade to Windows 8 for a whopping $14.99 CDN. For those who haven’t bought new hardware, it’s much, much pricier…….. $39.99. Pretty outrageous eh?

The verdict so far…. I’m liking it. It’s innovative. It’s pretty. It’s a whole new direction from a company that’s been running in a straight line for years.

Congratulations Microsoft… Job well done.

Cheers, Winston

Techno iRony

On September 24, 2012September 24, 2012 By WinstonIn Personal, Society, Technology, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Like many other people, my daughter and I both have cell phones. The idea is for us to be able to quickly and easily talk wherever, whenever. The reality is quite different… sort of.

Earlier today my wife and I were (as usual) trying to decide what to have for supper. As a deciding factor, she asked if our daughter (a sophomore in college) would be eating with us or her boyfriend.

This according to the commercials is the very moment cell phones are made for. I whipped out my awesome new phone and called my daughter…. straight to voicemail. No problem. She often responds quicker to texts than calls. I send her a text message asking if she is eating at home.

We do some groceries. We do more groceries somewhere else. We decide to have subs for supper.

As we leave the grocery store I get a text saying she is eating with her boyfriend. I say “No problem. Thanks for the heads up.”. Two hours later, I receive another text apologising for not letting us know earlier. That for me is the great irony of super accessible instant communications.

By it’s very ubiquity, it is rendered mundane. Because it is so overexposed, we tend not to think of it as a communication tool. Instead it’s a cool gadget, a toy, anything but a phone.

A greater irony lies in its illusion of connectedness. I am fortunate to enjoy a very close and loving relationship with my daughter. We talk frequently and easily about anything and everything. A simple question about supper took longer to receive a reply to than it would if she were on Mars.

The very ubiquity of our connectedness has in some ways disconnected us. That’s the Techo iRony of it.

Cheers, Winston

NaNoWriMo Day 2 And An F-35 Update

On November 2, 2011 By WinstonIn Canadian Military, Personal, Politics, TechnologyLeave a comment

Greetings from the land of poor but quick writing. One of the key pieces of advice for this process is don’t edit as you write. Just get the words down on the page and worry about everything else later. That’s why I specify poor writing. turns out it’s not too hard to write badly.

Writing quickly on the other hand is apparently another matter all together. To achieve the stated goal of fifty thousand words by November thirtieth, I need to write one thousand, six hundred and sixty-seven words every day. To put that in perspective, an average post here on Brain Bits is between two hundred and five hundred words.

So far, I’ve gotten just over two thousand words. That leaves me with around thirteen hundred to write before bed. Now all I have to do is figure out what the heck they’re going to be.

Of course, the more I write here, the less I’m writing there. But there was one more thing just before I get back to it. It’s a quick follow up to the post I wrote the other day about our pending F-35 purchase.

Michael Gilmore the top Pentagon weapons tester has put out a memo saying that training flights should be delayed for at least ten months. The memo sites a variety of potentially fatal issues including an untested ejection system, a faulty generator, and incomplete flight manuals.

Mr. Gilmore expects it to take about ten months to get everything up to snuff to resume testing. The U.S. Army and Air Force disagree with him, as does manufacturer Lockheed Martin. Of course they do. That’s why we have third party, civilian consultants. No vested interest equals a better chance of honesty.

Yup. That deal keeps looking better and better every time I hear more about it.

Cheers, Winston

Will Cheap Tablets Drive The Next Internet Revolution?

On October 30, 2011 By WinstonIn Global Issues, Politics, Society, TechnologyLeave a comment

In a recent article in Macleans, Jesse Brown was talking about the new Aakash tablet which is being made in India. It’s not here yet, but it’s likely coming soon.

The first thing to know about it, is that it’s a bottom end tablet. The processor is slow. The networking is substandard and there’s no multi-touch. But they sell for about $50 so who cares. Those are the facts. From there, it’s off to imagination land.

According to Mr. Brown, an influx of cheap tablets will get a billion more people on the internet. I’m just curious who’s going to pay those billion monthly bills. The fact is, hardware is the cheapest part of the online experience. Access fees are the biggest financial disincentive to more widespread embrace of the net.

I doubt that cheap tablets are going to be the great democratizing force foreseen in this article. Hardware is a one shot expenditure. You buy your device and it’s yours. Access fees recur every month. Depending on what level of access you want, a couple of months fees will run you more than the cost of these new tablets. Until we find a way to bring down ISP charges, widespread access remains a pipedream.

The true value of these types of products lies with people like me. It’s not going to be my primary device, but if it was that cheap, I’d consider one for certain applications. It would piggyback on my existing internet plan, and that’s the key here. It would be an auxillary device. If they’d been around when my daughter was younger, she would’ve had one. Instead of a netbook which cost several times as much.

Of course, it ignores the larger issue. We complain about the lack of manufacturing jobs but then get excited about how cheaply they build tablets in India. We want $50 tablets, but we want $20 an hour to build them. That’s the bigger issue. The government needs to find a way to create incentives for that type of manufacturing in Canada. We need to create entry level industries that can employ less skilled workers. The resulting products may not be the bleeding edge, but they will be more affordable.

That’s what will lead more Canadians online. Not affordable hardware, but real jobs that allow them to pay those monthly fees. Without those jobs, and others like them, there will be less people online, not more. That’s the real secret to the democratization of the internet.

Cheers, Winston

Two Reasons Canada Shouldn’t Buy F-35 Jets

On October 27, 2011October 27, 2011 By WinstonIn Canadian Military, Global Issues, Politics, Society, Technology1 Comment

Actually, there are more than two, but I don’t feel like writing a twenty-thousand word essay tonight. So I’ll limit this to just a couple, or so.

First up of course is the idea of spending BILLIONS of dollars on new fighter aircraft. I’m going to assume that’s because we live in an unstable part of the world where we are constantly at risk of invasion. No? Maybe the Conservative government is correct and we need them to assert our Arctic sovereignty. Against whom?

Anyone who is likely to be trekking about in the high north isn’t anyone we’re likely to shoot at. Let’s face it. The only countries actively challenging us in the Arctic are the U.S. and Russia. It’s really unlikely that we’re going to shoot at either of them. I mean really. If the U.S. thought that might happen, they probably wouldn’t be selling us the aircraft to make that possible. Add to this Prime Minister Harper’s own comment. According to the man who wants to buy these planes, the greatest threat to Canadian sovereignty is “Islamicist Terror”. I think it would be nice if he decided which threat we’re supposed to address and who these jets will address either.

My next nit to pick regards a fairly simple question. Why don’t we build our own jets? We’ve got our own aircraft industry. We’ve got more than enough technical knowledge. The Conservatives keep talking about how they plan to create jobs. Seems like a no-brainer to me. It’s not like we have any imminent threat demanding we upgrade in the immediate future. Fact is this could be a long term investment in Canadian businesses, creating Canadian jobs and employing Canadian technologists. What a concept.

Lastly tonight, I would like to raise a point I noticed in an article in Maclean’s. The jets which Mr. Harper and his fellow Bedlamites want spend billions on to defend the Arctic from “Islamicist Terror”, seems there might be a little problem with that. Apparently they won’t be able to communicate from there. A lack of polar orbiting communications satellites renders these awesome beasts mute. Way to plan Team Harper!

If the same salesperson from the U.S. shows up and starts talking bridges, give me a call. For twenty bucks and a couple of beers I can do a better job of advising you than the “pro”s you had for this one.

Cheers, Winston

Video Games, Virtual Worlds And Stepping Beyond The Real.

On October 17, 2011 By WinstonIn Media, Personal Responsibility, Pop Culture, Society, Technology, Video Games1 Comment

As someone who is slightly outside the usual demographic for video gamers, I periodically get asked what the appeal is. Of course, it’s usually phrased more like, “Don’t you have anything better to do with your life?” That depends on how you define better.

The short answer is, “Nope.” Told you it was short. That’s because it’s the wrong question. To more usefully address the implied question, I’ll need to address a common misconception. Video games aren’t actually any worse than golf, clubbing, drinking heavily, watching sports, reading, watching TV or any other pass time. From the start, they’ve been regarded as a brain destroying waste of time. Just like all of the things I just mentioned.

With the exception of clubbing, I’ve indulged in all of them. Oddly enough, I still indulge in most of them on an ongoing basis. Not so much with the heavy drinking or sports watching, but you get the idea. The short version is, most of the people who question my use of time, indulge in one or more of these activities themselves. So why the negative perception of video gaming? Because we have to blame something.

Let me use dogs to demonstrate that point. At the moment, Pit Bulls are the “Dangerous Breed”. Before that, it was Rottweilers, who came after Doberman Pincers, who followed German Shepherds. The truth is, none of these breeds are particularly dangerous if trained, treated and handled properly. But people love bad news, so that’s what the media focuses on. If Dobermans are the evil dog, then the media are going to report every bad Doberman story they can find. They might publish a hundred stories of Doberman attacks, but only a couple about the thousands of Dobermans who don’t attack anyone.

The same thing is true of video games. They are just the latest “bad” thing. The list has included, violence in Bugs Bunny cartoons, TV watching in general, cartoon watching in particular, horror movies, war movies, organized sports, lack of organized sports, reading any book except the Bible etc. It depends who you talk to and when as to what answer you’ll get. The simple truth is that there is no “bad” thing on that list.

Video games aren’t “bad”. It’s how people interact with them and what they choose to invest them with that can lead to problems. The media happily jump on a story about about an unfortunate young man who became so immersed in a game that he starved to death, or another who spent so much time gaming that his circulation failed and he ultimately died. Whenever a gamer does something “bad”, it’s the fault of the games and not the person.

For me, video games are an entertainment. They can provide an emotional outlet. Like any well executed entertainment, they allow me a brief respite from the everyday. Not to the exclusion of reality, but as a means to defocus. Let me clarify.

In an episode of the show “Corner Gas”, the main character announces he is going to take a vacation. He then takes his lawn chair, suntan oil, cooler etc and sets up on a nearby patch of grass. When questioned, he refers to it as a “Staycation”. That’s what video games are for me. A restful opportunity to recharge my mental and emotional batteries to better deal with the real world.

Sure, I play games where I drive 180 mph, or get trophies for set numbers of head shots, or chuck someone out a window just because I can. I also play games which involve building cities or civilizations, or solving puzzles or doing other non-violent things. Each game is enjoyed for it’s own merits. None of them carry over into the real world except in terms of slightly improved hand/eye coordination or logic processing skills. Both of which are proven benefits of regular video game playing.

In the real world, I don’t do any of those things. I don’t even drive, never mind at 180 mph. I’ve never shot anyone, or anything, or thrown anyone out a window. I’ve also never piloted a starship between systems, built a pyramid in Thebes, re-fought the Battle of Antietam, or flown a JN-4 Jenny along a mail route through the Appalacian mountains. I’ve done all of those things in video games. I’ve enjoyed them immensely.

It’s that ability to step beyond the real that is for me, the true appeal of video games. As it is for a well written novel, a good movie, or anything else that so fully engages me that it takes me out of the world. It refreshes my palate for the next serving of life.

Cheers, Winston

Brain Bits To Go

Category: Technology

NAPOWRIMO Day 15

Personal Poetry Challenge Day Forty-Two

Personal Poetry Challenge Day Thirty-Seven

Job Well Done Microsoft

Techno iRony

NaNoWriMo Day 2 And An F-35 Update

Will Cheap Tablets Drive The Next Internet Revolution?

Two Reasons Canada Shouldn’t Buy F-35 Jets

Video Games, Virtual Worlds And Stepping Beyond The Real.