onfocus

Another non-sci-fi story that sounds like it is: The Predator. "[The United States] has produced a weapon like no other this country has ever used: the Predator, an unmanned reconnaissance drone." The Simpsons predicted this years ago:

The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots. Thank you.

-- Military school Commandant, [4F21]

But the Predator isn't funny. Once they have computers completely controlling those things, machines will finally be able take over the world. I've seen it happen on Star Trek time and again. Have we learned nothing from TV?

It seems that almost every day I read something in the news that sounds like it's straight out of a dystopian science fiction novel. Today it's Special Ops gets OK to initiate own missions (courtesy MeFi). I can visualize the fictional plot now: special Ops OK's own mission to destroy the person who OK'd the order to let special Ops initiate own missions (along with anyone else who can take that power away). It just sounds like one of those decisions that starts a process that gets out of control. And then it can't be stopped by anyone. (Not even a gang of rag-tag post-apocalyptic teens on rollar skates. Or can they?)

Wow, the guy who coined the term cyberspace is now with blog. [via kottke] (oh yeah, he wrote some great books too. Especially Neuromancer.)

Fruit Stickers: "My home series is more vegetable-oriented than my work notebook..." Isn't that the way it always goes?

Matt's post about the audio quality of laptop speakers reminded me of a modern radio design that is very good: the Henry Kloss Model One. It's amazing what a good sound they get out of that small speaker. If they can do it with a small cabinet like this, someone should be able to design a laptop with great sound. Amazon sells them too.

Passenger window shot somewhere in Southern Oregon

My Dad has a collection of small table radios from the 30's through the 50's. The radios are great examples of early industrial design, and the new medium of plastic made far-out shapes possible. The designers of these things really had fun within the fairly simple constraints of: a speaker, a way to tune, and some tubes. It's fun studying his collection, and one night while I was visiting over the holidays I took a bunch of pictures of the dials. The dials don't show the wacky body designs, but they do show the varied display approaches to basically the same information. Once into the 50's (through today), design was pretty much standardized across brands, cutting-edge designers moved on to other objects, and you didn't get the variety that you had in radio's early days.


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I was playing around with the settings on my digital camera and took them in black and white.

Crashing wave on New Year's Day near Bodega Bay

Pointy Birds

Pointy birds,
oh pointy pointy.
Anoint my head
anointy 'nointy.

- Steve Martin

Check out Ticketstubs.org which launched today. skp really likes Matt's Engagement at Mt. Tam.

Happy New Year! I'm going to be launching a fun project in the new year called BlogFodder. It will be a daily email with an idea, phrase, poem, image, or question that could spark a weblog post. If you have a weblog and you have difficulty coming up with post ideas, BlogFodder is for you. If you just want to receive something different in your inbox, this could be for you too. Hopefully it will evolve as the year progresses, and your feedback and suggestions will help shape what it becomes.

I don't have the website or mailing list ready to go yet, but I'd like to start tomorrow so I can get in an email each day for 2003. If you'd like to sign up, go here and enter your email address. If you sign up now, there will still be a list signup process down the road when the site/list is officially ready to go. I'll announce it here when it's all set up. Thanks for checking it out—and I hope the daily BlogFodder will be an interesting new way to think about posts on your weblog.

I ran into Ev on a flight from Denver to Sacramento. On that flight I read the article in Fast Company that he discusses today. It's called What Should I Do With My Life? I recommend it.

The Bay Area is rainy. I hope it gets better before our trip back to Oregon. I'd hate to repeat the blizzard traveling we had to go through to get down here.