Lol, pop music is designed to be catchy, my friend. And catchy is a formula, although I can't find the link to the study. However, I did find this hilarious list (www.theregister.co.uk). Note Fat Lip. Bahahaha.
Also note that other than Neil Young, all CDs in my car right now are ridiculous anti-pop albums (read: prog metal concept albums). So I win.
While I appreciate some, I don't feel like I'm enough of a musician, or that I am musically inclined enough to appreciate the how/why of what they're doing. I would just be listening for the reason that it isn't pop music.
Maybe that's why I like The Decemberists. Not super-intricate, musically, but they do find ways to be interesting otherwise. Like their 9-minute sea-shanty about a boy seeking revenge on his deadbeat, seafaring father. (www.youtube.com)
Sadly, a cappella dubstep (www.youtube.com) is also a thing. The Youtube giveth and the Youtube taketh.
Idea:
1. Turn your iOS/Android device into a measuring tape that's not a pain the ass to use.
How:
2. Build a package of three battery powered devices that come packaged together and pair with a custom app on the iOS/Android device. Devices pair with the phone via BlueTooth, and emit noise outside the range of human hearing, one freq for each device. Devices come with instruction to place them at known (user adjustable) distances from each other in an equilateral triangle. (Use 4 devices and form a tetrahedron?) iOS/Android device listens to emitted noise to calculate its position relative to the devices. The App calculates and remembers the positions of the phone, so you can ask it to give you x,y,z and hypotenuse distance between whatever points you ask of it.
Result:
3. PROFIT
GOTYE, Grammar, and making fun of Creed and Nickelback: http://www.youtube....atch?v=32p8d6OudgU (www.youtube.com)
Huh... if it was just going back, and not necessarily changing anything in the timeline? "Time tourism," we'll call it?
In trying to weigh potential events, I keep coming to the conclusion that being witness to historical, anthropological, geological, etc. -type events on Earth would not be nearly valuable enough. For most events on Earth, we have, or might have, the scientific methods to deduce the truth about an event that otherwise currently remains a mystery. If we are given the ability to time travel but have to choose 1 time to travel to, I'd try to set my sights for something that is impossible for us to know. Something, perhaps, that humans as a species could not realistically witness.
I'd probably aim for something cosmological: the birth of a star, or a supernova. Maybe witnessing the creation of the Chicxulub crater (or any extinction event).
If those weren't possible... hmm. I don't know. Maybe I'd like to talk to this guy.
Time for a Pro/Con list
Pro for SnowRacer:
Rope can be tied to sled, so changes in direction don't yank out arm sockets (like wookies) during changes in direction
Sledder has limited steering, enabling following a different track (GIANT JUMPS AT SPEED)
Con for SnowRacer:
Rope can be tied to sled, meaning changes in direction >90 degrees off of direction of travel WILL toss the sled. Violently.
Rope is of finite length, meaning malicious snowmachiners can stop greater than rope length from jump, but less than rope length from landing point. (this can hurt, for the sledder, and be endlessly hilarious for snowmachiner.)
I had an idea for a game. Not "quit your job and hop on Kickstarter" good, but I've liked the idea for the 10 minutes I've been thinking on it.
Simulation games (for example, Sim City), in the right context, can be incredibly addicting. I played one on my phone for upwards of 10 hours that was simply managing a software development business. They're fun to play for a few reasons:
Working next to and around the telecommunications industry, my thought was to have something related. Not quite "Sim Tower," but more like "Sim Cell Phone Tower." I think this is a good simulation context, given that everyone seems to have opinions on cell phones, cell phone reception, phone plans, phone models, and relative speed.
The game would be equal parts:
It'd be fun to balance those things in combination with computer player, and see how well people can manage around random events. For example:
Each game could also be sort of a technological race as well (a la Civilization). Everyone could start out with the equivalent of "analog" cell technology, move up through time-divided signal technologies, code-divided signals, texting, data transfer, where your choice could be between cornering a market with your current technology in order to beat your competitor or to develop and innovate past them.
The above is my idea for the basic game mechanic.
The turn is that you could play with either a) your friends or b) Internet rando's, competing against their management of their cell phone network against yours.
The prestige would be that you play it on Google Maps with real locations, accounting for things like elevation, weather, and solar activity. You could finally answer for yourself the question of why it's hard to get cell phone service at your house when you live in a hole, or on the opposite side of a hill from a tower.
Thoughts?
I'm in:
"Siri not only becomes Rogue A.I, but Skynet itself"
"HTC Droids actually go all decepticon style into droids and become your worst nightmare hybrid of transformer/terminators (NO ONE CAN TRUST ELECTRONICS)"
"HTC Droids owned by Air Force Personnel in North Dakota and Wyoming take over ICBM fields and launch an attack against their greatest enemy - humans"
SPDCA: Another idea for a game.
I like the idea of dealing with special relativity in a video game, specifically time dilation at near-light-speed travel.
I don't know how to make that fun, though. Math isn't fun. Nor travel.
My first thought was an intergalactic grocery delivery service. You need fresh groceries across the galaxy within 1200 years, but it will take a year to grow the delicious fruits and vegetables, and they'll only be fresh for a few weeks.
My second thought was playing as some sort of space whale, that has to keep feeding in order to stay alive, but can travel at nearly the speed of light. So the trick would be to be accelerating, decelerating, and traveling while your space "krill" grows back after 1000 years, and timing your travel such that you never starve.
If you let a Nissan Leaf draw down to half charge, and assume a conservative estimate for the circuit's charging efficiency, it costs somewhere around $2.50 to top it back off to full charge.
Given the stated range of 100mi/full charge, assuming a linear relationship between % charge and range (probably the weakest spot in my logic here), half-charge probably gets me (& my driving style) about 30 miles. Which equals out to about $0.08 per mile.
My truck, with a 21 gallon tank, about 15 mpg in the summer, and a city range of about 315 miles, costs approximately $0.28 per mile if gas is $4.15/gallon.
If I consider only the cost of fuel (nevermind maintenance, insurance, and all that jazz), and I don't sell my truck, and make the Leaf my primary driver when the roads allow it, I would have to drive 150,000 miles to recoup the cost of buying a Leaf.
I've had my truck almost 5 years and I've only driven 44,000 miles.
It was a fun thought.
I had a reasonable affection for Tron: Legacy. Of course, I wanted it to be something it could never be, but that's another story.
However: I'm interested, at least a little, in the animated show they're doing, called Tron: Uprising.
Trailer here (www.youtube.com).
They've certainly captured the aesthetic - sleek, distopic futuristic cyber city. Clean, lean, leggy human-programs. The visuals and Tron universe feel (the music, dark atmosphere, cryptic yet serene lights) are certainly appealing, but I wonder if it has any substance to it that goes beyond the usual tropes (good vs evil, rebellion, corruption, a dribble of sexual tension, etc) and explores the computing aspect. Hell, they could get very meta, with references that sail not only over their childhood viewers, but largely any non-tech oriented adults. This could certainly draw in the Adult Swim crowd.
The young program slumps to the ground, broken and beaten. Watching as the I/O port closes and his last chance moves away from him at the speed of light. He was too late for this write cycle. And there won't be another one.
He will never reach non-volatile memory. He will be wiped, cleared into the oblivion of electrostatic noise and darkness. He will be forgotten, lost in the aftermath of the reboot... unless...
I... would be right there.
Today is my 4 year anniversary at my job. I have never done anything for this long continuously in my life, not counting social things.
I'm not sure if this is something I should be proud of or saddened by, since I both like my job and where I work, but I would also like to go find something and someplace new.
I wish sometimes the U.S. had a little better vacation expectations/conventions. Talking with IT contractors last fall who were based in Belgium was a disappointing experience. Extended leave of absences, months of vacation... such things here only tend to be granted if you're deathly ill, or are an executive, or some other good reason.
Mostly, I think it'd be awesome to simply bike around Alaska for a month in the summer.
