Monthly Archives: May 2014

Being Watched, SHIELD Finale, Amazing Animals, History Underwater, Far Fetched Contingency Plans, and Anticipa…

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So, the U.S. military apparently has a plan for dealing with a zombie apocalypse.

On first blush, that’s both disturbing and reassuring.

But if, like me, you know a bit of the history of contingency planning, you know it’s really not that unusual.

There have been numerous times in the history of the U.S. where the government has called upon the best and brightest of the creative types (and sometimes not the best or brightest, but still Hollywood types) to help them come up with things that everyone hopes will never happen. Disaster creation is an interesting thing to be able to put on your resume…. especially if it’s just fictional disasters.

You can pretty much bet if you’ve seen the plot on the big or small screen, someone in some government agency has a dusty stack of protocol documents for how to deal with it. Alien contact? Brookings Institute did that decades ago for the Feds. Alien attack? Someone’s got it. Nuclear holocaust? Done to death during the Cold War. And now zombies.

Makes perfect sense to me.

Giger Passes, Giant Critters, Batman, Daredevil, Furry Walls, Cool History, Science, and a few really funny things

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This entry is part 27 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

Sometime, my mind does really awesome things at night. Like craft amazing worlds and situations that put any movie to shame with their expanse and visual wonders.

Last night was not one of those night.

Last night the dream that my mind generated was, at best, a B-grade rode trip rock ‘n’ roll farce. Likely brought on by going to bed really wanting to watch Get Him to the Greek.

Mine involved some wild huge group trip to a big deal concert by some big name band. A total experience thing that involved staying up all night before in an airport before getting on board the secret plane to the concert location.

Well, hilarity ensued and there were baggage problems, missed connections, and a lot of running from point A to point B only to find out we actually needed to be at point C. Two of my friends made an appearance in the dream, on definitely as themselves, the other cast by whatever third rate casting director my brain employed for nothing more than their enthusiasm (because the character they played most certainly didn’t have the brains my actual friend does).

And just when all seemed lost, the hero arrived to save the day.

Billy Joel!

As played my Michael Keaton.

Seriously.

WTF mind? You couldn’t use the actual celebrity? It’s not like dream him is busy somewhere else. Right?

So, yeah, I woke up right before the (inevitable) big turn around in the brain film, so I was even cheated out of what would surely have been an epic (or epicly bad) grand finale… likely on the level of Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park.

~sigh~ Here’s hoping there’s more of a budget for tonight’s slumbering entertainment.

Science, Madness, Ice Cream Truck Music History, Slowly Impending Doom, and More

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This entry is part 26 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

I’m really not much of a programmer.

Yes, my job title technically does have “developer” in it, but I’m really not happy when I have to build things from scratch. I much prefer to mix already working things together in ways that get the job done in a quick and effective manner. Hopefully something that’s at least “close enough” at worst.

That’s not always possible.

And that’s what I’ve been dealing with at work on this one project.

Because I’m not much of a programmer, there’s no single language that I’m awesome with. At best, I’m mediocre with a few. And when it comes to some things, I’m really not that good at all. So I run into a lot of problems as I’m trying to get things to do things they don’t normally do.

But! I do have my own way of working through things. A lot of it relies on letting my subconscious bang it’s head against the issue while I occupy my conscious mind with something else (like, say Facebook, or another project).

Nine times out of ten, the solution pops into my head in less than an hour (sometimes much sooner). Sometimes it’s not the whole solution, but it’s enough of a perspective changer to shake loose the right fix from the aether (you know, where all computer programs already exist, right?).

On the surface it doesn’t look particularly “worky” or efficient. But it is terribly effective most of the time. Mainly because I’ve been using a similar method to work through all sorts of other problems–both life and work related–for a couple of decades now.

Compared to the times when I try to “buckle down” and solve problems like we’re told we always should–in some iterative, methodical way that other people can understand–things get done in about the same amount of time (if not more quickly) and I don’t get particularly stressed out about it. (When I’m actively banging my conscious head against a problem, the stress level just skyrockets and, eventually, totally gets in the way of coherent thought… which isn’t all that productive.)

The process basically goes like this:

  • Identify the problem
  • Do a bit of research (so I’m sure I know that there’s no simple solution out there)
  • Set the subconscious on the task
  • Fiddle around with other things for a while
  • Immediately switch gears when the solution pops in
  • Implement to solution
  • If it works, awesome… if not, see how it’s changed the problem
  • Repeat if necessary

So, yeah, that’s what I’ve spent most of my work life doing… especially when it comes to programming.

Ant Physics, Lots of Television Show Stuff, Godzilla, and an Awesome Optical Illusion

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This entry is part 25 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

Over the next week or so, there’s going to be a lot of news on TV shows that get canceled, renewed, and picked up from the list of potentials.

That always breeds a lot of laments and cheers from people… and more than a few quirked eyebrows in some cases.

It also breeds some great discussions about why we like what we like and why shows we don’t like get renewed. That’s what happened a lot today. I won’t rehash it (and if I were going to, I’d probably do it on my ToobTalk.com site… which has gathered quite a bit of dust).

There’s also a lot of highly charged political stuff on the horizon… net neutrality being the big one that concerns me. So, keep an eye out for that, too.

Legal Footwork, Hidden History, Tasty Science, and Some Really Good Ideas

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This entry is part 24 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

It never ceases to amaze (and impress… and confuse) me what people get passionate about.

The big story in the feed today was about the Vibram Five Finger toe shoes class action settlement. Vibram is paying out a pretty penny to a lot of people due to some unsubstantiated claims they made in their advertisements for their “shoeless shoes”… and seem to have done so in order to help quell some noise being made about their footware doing exactly the opposite of what they were saying it can do.

Needless to say, there are a lot of articles out there that lead with the sensation, snarky headlines. (Because, let’s face it the shoes look odd and the people who wear them most are not the most mainstream most of the time… plus, no better way to get traffic than to get people pissed at you, right?) But, almost amazingly, most of the discussion I’ve seen in the FB comments where those articles are shared is both impassioned and calm. A rare combination if there ever was one on the Internet.

There are a lot of examples on both sides–a lot of them personal anecdotes–that people feel strongly about. For every person who had a bad experience, there’s one that had a great experience. And they’re actually discussing their differences instead of just outright shouting one another down.

The bottom line seems to be that, no matter what, nothing is going to work for everyone. But, Vibrum is changing its course a little and doing what it can to keep those bad stories from coming out and ruining it for those who do use and enjoy their product. They’re handling it sensibly (from everything I’ve seen, at least) and the public seems to be responding in kind (some online gossip/clickbait articles aside).

That’s good to see.