Author: Teel

I can hear the lights this morning. I’m sure I’ve mentioned the giant, overpowered bulbs they use to light this place. This morning, instead of just turning on a few lights over how own working space, John (the ONE person in Building B who likes the lights on) turned on every single light. It’s early, there’s no one else here, and it’s pretty quiet. Which means I can hear EVERYTHING that’s on. The cooler for ther server room, the transformers, and worst of all, the incessant chirping/buzzing of the lights themselves. It’s really disturbing.

So, out of the blue, I’m going to Clifornia this weekend. No advance planning, just “Hey, you wanna go to California this weekend?” “Sure. I’ll see if I can get Friday off” … “I got Friday off. Let’s go.” “Okay.” And we’re off. We’re going to go to Six Flags Magic Mountain on Saturday, and I’m sure we’ll figure something out to do with the rest of the weekend. Maybe Californialand or Universal studios or Venice Beach or … I don’t know … planting bombs at the airport.

I’m going with my younger sister, Angela. She needs to get away from stuff going on in her life right now, and I’ve been meaning to get away, too. Plus, I have vacation days to burn. Due to poor planning on my part, I have two weeks of vacation & personal days that I have to use before the end of the year or lose them. I don’t know what to do. Probably I’ll lose a few paid days off.

So, if you care, there will be no new comics posted tomorrow, no new posts until at least Monday. Plus, unless we end up watching a movie while we’re in CA, there will be no movie review until I find the time to watch a movie, then review it. But, I fully expect to have a good time this weekend, and get home in time to do some new comics for Monday morning.

As long as people continue to ignore the lessons of history, there’s always a chance that you will one day find love.

Some days, like today, they don’t turn all the too, too bright lights on at work. For instance, today in Building B where I work, of 20 giant, evil lights, only three are lit. These three alone provide more light than the average dusk/dawn/twilight outdoors, but cast the same long shadows at my end of the building. I know it is bright outside; I just walked across the street for lunch. Prior to that though, I came in from pre-dawn darkness and it had felt very much like a late-night session here so far today. Luckily, everyone around me agrees that this is a preferable lighting situation to the standard headache-inducing, glare-producing lighting we normally have. Turns out our IT guy is out sick today. He’s the one that thinks he needs so much light most of the time, and since we always bend to the will of those who seem normal (ie: wanting to work in well-lit conditions is normal), we always have too much light.

I’m babbling. The point is, I’m basking in dim light and long shadows and I love it.

So, I posted a long post about how I wanted computers to integrate with my life, how I wanted to be able to access information with a context. I want it to be with me at all times, with a HUD or corneal implant. Building a car whose interior surfaces are displays to display this information space seems like a good, less invasive way to get people used to the idea of a persistant information-rich environment. The Nissan Ideo, a concept car at this year’s Tokyo Motor Show, incorporates this idea of immersing people in contextual information space. Presumably, it would get its information via the new/upcoming 3G Cellular network, which can send/receive data wirelessly faster than most people’s “broadband” internet connection from their Cable/DSL provider. (I am looking forward to the 3G network in the US quite a bit.) I doubt this particular car will ever be built, but something like it will surely be available within a few years from someone. Then maybe my vision for wearable information-space immersion will be creatable within a decade or two. Hooray!

Continue reading The future information-space