Slicing the air

Putting together a cool, polished, professional drone video is cool but where are all the startup/practice/learning crash videos?

I don't know (in other words, I haven't looked).

However, there is one way to find out and that's to create your own.

Therefore, here's my compilation music video of first drone flight tests.

Is it art? science? both? neither?

You decide...

More as it develops!

Thus Endeth This Blog

The cowboy rolls up his knapsack/pup tent combo, slings it over his shoulder and steps into his rocket boots to pursue a lifelong dream.

Where he rides, there are no sunsets.

The path he takes is a lonely one, as usual.

It's always been about you, me, us, as usual, too.

He issues a voice command and off he goes.

"Giddyup, boy, let's get this show on the road!"

Whoooooosh!!!!

WWI vets and starlets, take a look

Eye on in

After Two Days of Trial and Error

While I'm smoking this funny technology called the tablet, rep'd by the iPad, here are the apps we've downloaded/purchased so far:

• Friendly for facebook
• TWC MAX+
• Fly Delta
• Yelp
• Fandango
• XFINITY TV
• TV.com
• Star Walk
• Potshots - Love

So far, so good.  Definitely a companion, not a replacement, for my Kindle 2.

One final note: wireless dropouts, what's up with that?

To those who claim to speak for the anonymous

Casual rule: if you're going to set both sides against the middle, don't announce your plans.

You know, like groups that stake claims for terrorist acts - only the officially-approved terrorist groups are going to get credit.

Can someone take over this species for a while?  Running the parallel universe of a blog is pretentiously limiting.

You'd think that seven billion different personalities (based off a small set of personality/cultural types) would be enough to keep me entertained.

Instead, like the way I figured out how to create, using standard test forms, unique tests for every student in my classes, having fun watching students try to cheat off one another and failing because they did not know that the set and/or order of questions was different (one of my favourite tricks was putting a "not" in the middle of some students' true/false questions and not others), I have found that, creating a bunch of these parallel blogs across the Internet, with paragraphs rearranged and sentence structure/logic tailored to subcultures/languages, the pebbles in the pond are creating a stone island and artificial reefs.

Too bad the environment is too hot to produce a new tropical paradise in the tropics.  Canadian beaches are cheap and ready for reef development if you don't mind winters that are still a little cold today.

I stir the pot after computing all the possible chemical interactions, allowing for random changes due to quantum effects I don't measure.

If you're going to buy a laptop computer in which the memory (HD/SSD) has been wiped clean, don't go around asking strangers about installing your own illegal copy of an OS - you stand out like a sour gumball.

Can I talk about what you can't see or face the facts there's not a language that'll explain to our combination of states of energy what states of energy are really all about?

A Backward Look Forward

Today.
Yesterday.

Don't kid yourself.  The future is here and gone.

What was that, my omniscent agent?  I'm repeating what someone else has already said?

Well, then, get another client who doesn't earn you a commission but plenty of payoffs with the fixers and movers, if you know what I mean.

Tick Season Has Started

A train to the Moon.  It's a ride the few and proud will enjoy, and many see.

What do you know about brothers who go click and clack near Gentle Store in Limrock, Alabama?

I was scraping the skunk junk off my junk sailing between Eris and Sedna on a junket to decide if Jimmy Dykes and Brad Nessler influenced the outcome of my bookie's income because of what happened to Walker in the fourth grade.

Knit 1, PEARL10.

Thanks to Josh at Hiley VW for cleaning his father's Ford Explorer Sport Trac.

Thanks to the Rite Aid pharmacist who recognised us at McCutcheon's Magnolia House Restaurant.  The owner of the restaurant told us she'd taught dance at UTK for 37 years and was sad to see the university end the dance program.  However, she was glad to be back in the house where she and her brother grew up after her grandmother died.  Honey, there ain't nothin' like good ol' fashioned Southern comfort comfort food!

The owner of Keepsakes Scrapbooking, Gifts & Antiques, who had opened the store as a "project" for her daughter, whose divorce led her to get a fulltime job and away from assisting her mother, has run the store for seven years and looks forward to the day when the economy picks up and she can sell the store for what it's really worth, having made no profit for the last two years.  Oy vey!

Meanwhile, last Saturday at UBC, a new sales record was set, with 300 more transactions than the busiest business day (not counting the ski sales).  A thanks to the ever-smiling, beautiful/handsome faces of Gail, Brittany, Pam W., Janet G., Aaron, Josh and Samantha.  Oh yes!

I don't know which made me happier today, the May 1962 copy of Boy's Life for $19.99 at Keepsakes, or the 64GB Apple iPad for $620.99 at UBC (the lesser bargain of the two correction: it was/is a better bargain).

I wonder out loud here.  If, in the past, some xx% of marriages were basically women being slaves to men and children, does that account for the fact that only 40% of people today see value in the partnership that marriage is supposed to be?

Like a friend of mine told her ex-husband and son, "I don't care where your clothes are or what you want for dinner because you don't care about the kind of day I had."

Labels are not excuses for the way we treat one another.  Rude or disrespectful behaviour is indicative of your character and not something that is allowed because of a title or role you pretend to carry around with you like a badge.

Like Steve Jobs said, one day you're going to wake up and realise that you really are going to die one day.

Today is the first day of the last days of your life together with the rest of us.

I'm exposing the emperor's new clothes from now on even if it's the nonpaid role I've assigned myself because all I'm going to do is die one day...

...because all our species is going to do is suffer another lost civilisation and if we're lucky we'll leave enough clues for the next civilisation to make better progress the next time.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

In my opinion, political boundaries don't exist anymore.  Mexican military forces are said to invade our land while Chinese/Russian satellites invade our space and we do nothing in return.  Canadian spies come and go and we say nothing, too.

If a person can run a pet cremation business and make a profit, then I'm sure Humpty Dumpty can be put back together again.

Janet, you repeated over and over the name of your son's agribusiness specialty of landscaping and lawn care.  Avast?  Avert?  Avant?  I can't remember.  May his Twickenham, Ledges and other neighbourhood work keep him busy, if not making a living wage - it's happening to all of us, as can been seen by empty shopping centres from here to California and back.

When your cities and towns are the gold rush that spiked and collapsed, what's next?

Stay tuned.

The Book of the Future actually has good things to say about our continuously-moving moment together.

I didn't say easy.  Good.

You'll see.

Just like Claire saw the old Chattanooga Choo-Choo train station for the very first time.  Wish I coulda been there, Claire.  Life is full of eye-opening experiences.

Could Jeff Gordon win tomorrow?

Did the guy at UBC buy the iPod Touch so he could add a Tom-Tom GPS unit and CoPilot Live?

Who has correctly predicted the cricket champ?

Will the forces of free enterprises win for the people or for the...

[Please recharge your battery at this time to continue enjoying the free Internet service we provided in exchange for promoting us]

Yes, Laurie Anderson, we are all going down together but it's going to be a glorious ride!  Buckle up!  The weather's calling your name!  Got your fishing poles and tackle box ready?

Can treaties treat trauma?

Just in time for management-labour talks.

START and start again

Hey, church lady.  Is this the Satan you were talking about?

Health, the lineal frontier

Two bits, full of bytes/bites:

1. World's smallest computer?
2. Success starts with breakfast:

At Mission Terrace, Ashleigh Brilliant asked me if I had a question and I was dumbfounded at the time.  After I left, I realized the one question I wanted to ask him, "What do you eat for breakfast?"

His response, via email:

"For breakfast I usually have

• Hot cereal with milk and a banana
• Scrambled eggs and bread
• Prune juice and decaf coffee"

Index Finger

While I'm working through the issues that the computer programmers don't know will be presented to them in printed reports they haven't been assigned to generate, I'll give you the following.

To the folks in the Middle East and Africa.

To the folks in North Korea, Cuba, China, Iran, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Pakistan.

To those who are under the impression they are under persecutory regimes of any kind...

This is the future: franchising.

So, I suggest to you that you get with your friends and family, pool your resources, get microloans, if you have to.

And then work with your political friends to enact laws that protect intellectual property and freedoms of expression.

Finally, after all is set up, build yourself a brand image that you can sell to others.

Sell processed food or clothing lines.

If you cannot dream up your own brand, buy into the brands that already exist.

And, if you're smart, you'll negotiate deals where your brand(s) will feed the malnourished and starving in the world.

Instead of delivering bags of rice and flour to places that don't have cooking fuel or safe drinking water, airdrop in crates of Pringles and Coca-Cola.

Make the world's greatest falafel and open Falafel Bazaar eateries all around the world.

Span the globe with spanakopitas.

Serve lamburgers with children's toys.

Stop the slaughter of endangered animals by showing that bush meat is not the ultimate free range food - your product is.

Sure, petroleum jelly is the best ointment for superficial wounds but doesn't the name Vaseline or Neosporin sound more scientifically safe?

Do you speak a 16-bit language?

Do you believe we are an ignorant species?

Do you write blog entries that invite insight in order to increase readership because you know, and your audience knows, you have only one goal in mind - to save the species from itself, but in the long, drawnout process of doing so, killing us with obesity to get us to another place in time that's better for the total population as a whole?

Would a blog supplement, "as read by the author," a podcast (or perhaps an open source sound file) be a bestseller?  Could I pull a Paul Newman and put the profits to universal improvement?

My inventor friends are begging me not to give up, that we together are building a better world, despite repetition that gives me severe migraines which block my thought patterns.  "Don't confuse yourself over the normal issues of deteriorating tissue, blood and bones," they whisper in emails.

As I say, I am here with you and thank you for sharing your time with me.  I am not perfect and sometimes it shows more obviously on days when I can't stop being a normal person with everyday aches and pains.

One of my friends recommended I look into Autodesk's free animation program for kids.  I will, I promise.

The placebo effect of a large tablet of aspirin is often the best elixir for an ol' skeptic like me (and cheaper than a six-pack which would inhibit my driving to the store to buy a box of premixed fudge brownie ingredients to surprise my wife with hot brownies for the surprises she made/bought for me).

Shivers down my spine

When the phrase "my lawyer and I" meets the so-called amateur sports industry in collegiate circles, I feel a cold chill.

I don't get revenge.  I just reveal the list of chemicals and psychiatry visits of those who present to the world a perfect image.

Take pride in your imperfection.

That way, there's nothing to hide.

Otherwise, we're just holding your body over a cliff and asking you when to say "uncle," because "my lawyer and I" falls on deaf ears.

Just like, as a pet owner myself, I ask if, when the growth of the population of my species puts enough pressure on available food sources, we'll have to decide whether we get to feed our pets or starving members of our species who can't afford patented GM food under control by Megaconglomerated, LTD.

"I'm sorry, my little child, but Fluffy has reached its age of viability and we have to turn it in to the reinventers of Soylent food products to feed the hungry masses.  We'll buy you another one to raise in our minifarm of a housing unit."

Wait, do I hear a cry of "It's not fair" from the aging pet product industry?  If so, it's time to rethink your business model!

The only rule is there are no rules

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One Voice, One Vote

Tapping the crowdsource pool.

As if Google's Gestapo-style SEO rulemakers weren't controlling enough...

Now it's Apple that's trying to control who gets a piece of the pie!

Ubiquity? Frayed Knot!

Informationicus Graphicus, carpe diem.

"I Talk To The Wind" by King Crimson takes us into the next hour.

Take A Chill Pill

While we work to ensure that a representative government can provide support for the people of Egypt (what's the point of being free to speak/assemble if you and your family starve?), I try to keep this narrative going.

Looking across a multibillion lightyear matrix to assess possible futures, I sometimes forget that anyone reading this is more concerned about what's going to happen today or tomorrow to immediate friends and family.

I also forget that you don't know which blog entries are purely fictional and which are statements/predictions about facts.

Remember, this blog serves as the billboard for announcements/adverts in a fictional universe that closely parallels ours.

As the Committee's Storyteller-In-Residence (and rotating team leader/member), I have the responsibility to both entertain and inform.

There is no demographically defined target audience. Every person in our seven-billion strong species is available for characterisation.

One blog entry may reflect the opinion of an old man who feels the world has left him behind.

One blog entry may be about an Indian family running a hotel franchise, or a man in the military traveling out-of-town, weary but alert and leary of strangers.

As temporary Committee leader, I move from place to place to MBWA (manage by walking around).

You are the input to the system. Your actions, your social connections and your life story (the narrative that appears through hindsight) give me insight into how the future is going to work out to our species' benefit.

How you choose to behave is yours to choose for yourself and your family.

I had planned a series of blog entries showing you how we break down social connections into basic building blocks that we have programmed for every type of social situation.

However, a behaviourist pointed out that we had not accurately programmed the chemical and quantum exchanges.

So, the series will have to wait.

Which means I have to talk to you about something you probably already know.

In other words, you can skip this next part.

Education.

Do you think if you can read this that you are educated?

As a specialist who holds peer-selected awards for excellence in your field of study, would you submit yourself to being placed in a maze where gaining exit before you starved or suffocated required absolute knowledge of your specialty?

Of course, your life is that maze.

Do one thing at a time and do it well.

That's what this blog is about, educating me, teaching me that knowing and telling the future is much more serious than I bargained for.

I just wanted to help my friends and family improve the return on their investments.

How was I to know that no genie goes back into a bottle?

Maybe I need to go to Central America and find that old lady's family again, ask them if they have any family lore that would ease my worries that the future is uncertain and not as predictably true as my predictions have shown with increasing accuracy.

Otherwise, there will come a time when we know so well what's going to happen next that we can intuitively jump forward past great leaps of innovation because we already have lived through them in our pinpoint future projections.

Don't stop loving your family and trusting strangers. We're all in this moment that leads to a bright future together.

Dog In The Mustard

An inventor friend of mine was showing me his new contraption.  He figured it, or something like it, had already been invented but he wanted to perfect the device for his own use.

Like most folks around these parts, brushing your teeth is a daily chore.

You grab the free toothbrush given to you by your dentist or the Tim Allen souped-up VibraShaky and grind food stuff into and around your teeth, take a drink of water, swirl it around in your mouth and then spit it out, assuming the food stuff you ground into your teeth will follow the spittle.

My friend was a big fan of Tool Time.

For example, when his heat pump quit working in the middle of all this recent cold weather, he brought an HVAC guy in to install a new one but my friend kept the old one.

He pulled the whole house fan out of the heat pump and attached it to the top of his riding lawn mower, turning his mowing experience into an electric airboat joy ride (just don't stand behind the mower while it turns blades of grass and little rocks into military-grade projectiles).

So, when it comes to anything, my friend puts his creative bent to full use.

Therefore, when he invited me over to his house yesterday for lunch, I figured I was in for a real treat.

After lunch, my friend ushered me into his gizmo-filled bathroom to see his latest masterpiece.

Ladies and Gentlemen, your attention, s'il vous plaît. Here in front of you, presented to the public for the very first time, before even our marketing wizards could crowdsource a name for all ages, we give you...[drum roll please]

The Carwash For Teeth!

As the Carwash For Teeth enters your mouth, it will use a laser system to create a three-dimensional map of the area, including microscopic examination of the small pockets in your enamel that neither you nor your dentist can see.

The Carwash For Teeth will then unfold a set of clamps to secure the cleaning appliances about to go to work on extracting foreign material and restoring your teeth to their perfect natural health.

The first appliance, the PreWash, will move from tooth to tooth applying a thin coat of enamel-safe solvent.

The second appliance, the Dual Scrubber-Vac, will apply a gentle but steady stream of water, first to the gums, insides of the cheeks and top/bottom of tongue, evacuating the detritus and excess liquid as it goes, and then to the teeth.

And here's where it really gets good.

My friend's third and secret appliance will use a subnuclear DNA analysis appliance to identify any "bad" organisms residing in the mouth and zap them, leaving your mouth with open spaces and the reconstituted states of energy of the "bad" organisms on which the "good" bacteria and other organisms can feed and spread their colonies.

The final appliance will strengthen your teeth's enamel through a patented process I cannot mention here (my friend is keen on NDAs, as he should be) but I can tell you it distinguishes between live teeth and artificial teeth, able to switch strengthening programs on the fly.

After the Carwash For Teeth has finished, it unclamps from the inside of your mouth and displays one of a series of faces, from sad to happy, along with a score between 1 and 100, and an appropriate song, to tell you how well your mouth performed from one cleaning to the next.

Of course, you can transfer your teeth cleaning rating data to your favourite device - smartphone, MP3 player, e-reader, tablet, PC, etc. - to show your friends and family on your social network not only your mouth health but also a not-so-subtle advert for the product.

My friend is working on the final details of the product and should have it ready for DFT and DFM verification before going full blast into production.

He offered to let me try the Carwash For Teeth but I declined, postponing my "free trial" until he'd convinced more than himself and the family dog to use it on a regular basis ("See," he told me, "the Carwash For Teeth is such a safe, self-cleaning, sanitary invention, I trust myself to share this with the dog and not worry about human-canine disease transmission."  But does the dog trust him?).

More as it develops...

I've Been Moved

Ode to interactivity.