Means of Seeing what the eye brings

December 30, 2009

real virtuality

Filed under: gadgets,learning,philosophy — osteoderm @ 1:10 pm

So…. I’m on Twitter now. And, after months of resisting it and wondering what the fuss has been about, I’m now newly wondering… what the fuss is about. Facebook adequately fulfils my telefriendship requirements, and this (underutilized) blog takes care of any greater need for web-presence. So, why Twitter?

Mainly, I’ve been wanting to investigate how Twitter and Twitter-like services can extend the reach of things into the internet. “Things” as opposed to “people” or simply “information”. I recently watched an Esther Dyson video where she posited technology whereby objects in the physical world report upon their condition and location online. So far, the internet has served mainly as a depository and coarse manipulator of human-supplied information. Sometimes it has served as a manufacturer of information and meta-information. It is as if we have been slowly transforming the physical world into virtual information and storing it. With the emergence of social networks and massive user-generated content, we are increasingly transforming our cognitive selves into virtual copies as well.

I’ve been very interested in seeing how the virtual world can reach back out into the literal world. On the coarsest level, this might mean increased telepresence, telesensing, and telecontrol; just as telephonics has shrunk the world of communication, so too might some future technology shrink the literal world. Imagine beyond the telephone (which extends my speech and hearing across the globe) to some connection which extends not only the remainder of my senses, but my ability to manipulate that remote point. As it is, remote devices can autonomously generate digital facsimiles of themselves, which I can then virtually manipulate; I want to see a proliferation of technology that allows the global networks transmit literal physical information as well.
Here’s another analogy: At one point it was common to type a letter and mail it. Then came teletype, and a letter typed into one end of a wire was typed out at another end. Then came the fax machine, with the physical media refined further for transmission. Now, email, where the physical media is completely abandoned; the method of transmission has become the message entire. The increased proliferation of mobile devices has now removed the need for physically-fixed entry and exit points for transmitted media. However, it is now becoming increasingly complicated to produce physical output/interaction.

I continually consume information, and sometimes produce it. Much of this information represents a virtual copy of a remote experience, object, person, or process. While both science and science fiction have been looking towards “virtual reality”, I find myself seeking out a “real virtuality”, where my online self is able to physically interact with actual experiences, objects, people, and processes.

September 23, 2009

week no. one with the new palm pre

Filed under: gadgets,learning — osteoderm @ 2:49 pm

Okay, not even a week. Four days. But here’s the snapshot, the rundown, the little list of first impressions:

First off, let’s be straight: I am not anti-iPhone, but I am a full-on Palm geek. If this makes me biased, so be it. Actually, I was leaning towards an iPhone for awhile… The basic plan was to go iPhone when my current phone and/or my Palm T|X finally die. So, when my old phone was starting to show it’s age (failing audio, creaking chassis, random battery malfunctions), I decided that it was finally time to get a smartphone, and the iPhone was my first choice. Then out comes the Pre, throwing a wrench into the plan.

Now for the money. AT&T wanted $300 for an iPhone. Sprint wanted $150 for a Pre. Even with the security deposit to Sprint and the early-termination fee to AT&T, the Sprint Pre was $100 cheaper than an AT&T iPhone. (Yes, I know, as an existing AT&T customer with a phone not bought from them, my iphone “upgrade” actually costs more than a new iPhone with a new account; what can ya do?)
Ignoring the advertising, it looks like the Sprint’s Pre plan isn’t that much crazily less-expensive than an AT&T iPhone plan. But, it is still cheaper, and the basic plan includes everything: unlimited texting, data, navigation, etc., whereas these are add-ons with AT&T.

Further impressions: I was hoping that migrating my info from one Palm device to another would be straight-forward. It was not. The Pre pulled my contacts from facebook and Gmail instantly and faultlessly, but woe to the person who doesn’t use one or both of those. Getting the rest of my T|X info transferred over involved a somewhat labourious route of hotsyncs, exports, imports, and uploads. I still haven’t gotten my full calendar history synced, but everything else is there.
Surprisingly, the Pre does not (or at least , I have not discovered how to) employ the simple and expedient “beaming” of information in vCal, vCard, or any other format I use. I know the Pre has done away with IRDA, but the T|X still manages this with Bluetooth; unfortunately, it’s a one-way conversation. WebOS is so far removed Palm Garnet (or anything else out there) as to behave like it’s from an entirely different parent.

Functionally, the Pre does everything I’d need it to do. What little core functionality it lacks is sure to be addressed via push WebOS updates or new apps.
On the design side, the Pre feels a little plasticky, but only to the point where I’m reluctant to drop it in my work pants pocket; it’s not flimsy or fragile, but “robust” is not an adjective I’d use here. For my fat fingers, no keyboard will ever be big enough, so the single-thumb pecking on the wee keys is neither good nor bad; it’s just par for me. The screen and touch are both killer. The only lag I notice is on app launches; after launched, all the apps I’ve tried run quietly and neatly in the background, and pulling them into focus feels pretty snappy.

As an Ubuntu user, having an iPhone that syncs cleanly with a computer/iTunes is meaningless to me. The Pre is utterly cloud-centric, although I’ll be experimenting with just how well it speaks Linux. I’ve already gotten into an easter-egg or two, and am about to dig into dev mode. More to come…

September 8, 2009

circles of circles

Filed under: aspie,friends,learning — osteoderm @ 6:32 pm

I recently got back in touch with Kyla. The casual reader will not, of course, have any idea what this means. Those who know me well enough, however, may pause here to let it sink in.

Kyla Chapman was my first love. I met her the summer I turned 17, in Nelson. Alongside a mixed table of other friends old and new at The Vienna Cafe. Summer afternoon sun slanted in through the window, lit up her hair. And that smile. A walk of two blocks later, and we shared a fetish for green jellybeans.
Our first kiss in that tent among the apple trees; her bare-assed run back to the house, dress a-blow in the moonlit breeze; a scene worthy of some re-mixed or otherwise less-melancholic Cure song… (“Pictures Of You”, if I might suggest it).
But summertime romance far from home is never meant to last, not like that. Yes, there were the letters, the calls, and when all seemed lost (hell it was lost!), the run-run-run-away, the long weird bus-ride south… And that last Bonnington night, I sat on the Chapman’s back porch, looked up at a different kind of moon, filtered by barren autumn branches, and cried out all the hopeless tears a rejected teenage soul can hold. I was so sure then that these things that do not last will be forever lost.

For ten years on after, I thought of her every day; not always a large thought, perhaps just a fleeting half-tone image or un-grasped note on the wind, but every day. Other relationships came and went; some in time proving to be of far more substance than that sliver of summer… But in each, there I was, trying in some same small insane way to fix that past failure. In every woman I found myself seeking out that part of Kyla, that part to whom I would beseech and plead and ultimately fail to “fix” at all.

At 27 years old, I hit bottom. I had destroyed, one by one, the best relationships I had. I’d broken Krista’s heart by falling in love with another younger girl, someone in whom I saw more of my relationship with Kyla to fix; that relationship, too, would quickly and painfully pass. I was broke, increasingly homeless, and steadily alienating every last friend I had.
Then… There was this one crazy 5:00 AM autumn morning… the weirdest mist flooded up from the lake and had the local visibility down to a few feet… the barest trickle of dawn light suffused the scene with an unworldly glow. Even inside, with no glass in the windows, the fog rolled in.
I stepped outside, and into the smallest feeling I had ever had. Right then, I felt as small and insignificant as I could be… and then, for the shortest moment my awareness could sense, the I which felt so small shrank to nothingness itself.
Of course, this is not an awareness than can be held on to. But in that split second, I learned to stop holding on to that perpetual awareness of Kyla.

A couple more relationships have passed through my life in the next ten years since then. Some have fared poorly (with Kim, I was trying to repair mistakes I’d made with Krista), while some have fared beautifully. Most beautifully, many of those past relationships and friendships have come full circle, or had their own circles overlap mine; love or hate Facebook, there’s been no few re-connections there. A few things never fail to amaze me: people have seldom forgotten me, although they usually assume I have forgotten them; furthermore, they are themselves typically amazed to learn just how much, and in what detail, I remember them.
Perhaps it is closure after all. Or maybe it’s just that, in looking down the timeline from the other end, we see that some things never needed to be closed at all. Mostly, I think it is knowing so much more of how I think that has changed so much of how I feel.

7, 17, and 27… interesting years, still redolent with the mistakes/lessons that have been my rod and staff. I find myself looking forward, with wry smile and cocked brow, towards 37. Perhaps the best lesson I’m learning is to stop trying to fix the past, repair the mistakes, and un-break the hearts… and that while indeed nothing does ever last, nothing is ever really lost at all.

September 7, 2009

a hand up

Filed under: learning — osteoderm @ 4:17 pm

I’ve started a new job recently, one where I was asked how much I wanted to be paid. And, while I’ve been consistently employed making decent money, I really have to learn to ask for more.
Talking it over with my ladyfriend a couple nights ago, I realized that it might be another Canadian/American thing. Although she was certifiably bat-shit-crazy on many other fronts, one past girlfriend of mine was convinced of it; Canadians -especially in America- habitually refuse to stick a hand out and ask to be shown the money.
I suppose it’s just another kind of work ethic: I’ve somehow had it ingrained in my thinking that one advances in the workplace by working hard, and calmly, quietly asserting one’s skills. Of my last five employment positions, two have yielded small unsolicited raises after some period of hard work.
I’m learning that in much of the world, this is just not how one advances. Advancement seems to go to the person who solicits it, to those who advertise, rather than demonstrate, their skills. It’s a sorely American lesson for this Canadian. While I’m still disinclined to “renegotiate” the wage I’m now earning (who knows! maybe perhaps another unsolicited raise is in the works!), I’ll definitely be giving myself another 20% “raise” the next time somebody asks me to name my price.

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