Sam Carr’s Dog Speaks

Alright; I just watched “How William Shatner Changed the World” (hereinafter referred to as “the show” <-- legaleze) on the History Channel earlier this evening last nite. As a result, my mind has begun to wander (big surprise) and this post opens with a big –>Trekkie Alert!<-- in bold red letters. I must also warn you, dear reader, that my opinions are not always ‘politically correct’ in their presentation. If you have deeply held insecurities or are easily offended by things that go against what you take to be fact without proof (faith), you might not want to go any further in your reading. With that out of the way and all the schmucks gone (why are you still here? hehe), this post will deal with the real life possibilities of the Star Trek teleportation device; physically, mentally, emotionally and quasi-spiritually (is that a word?).

First, the show mentions the physical impossibility of the transporter due to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Simply put, this principle states: in the Quantum Mechanical world, a particle’s position and momentum cannot be precisely measured. This would seem to throw a bit of a wrench in the works if you subscribe to the particle theory of matter. I will go with that assumption in this post, as it is the most widely believed opinion that particles do indeed exist. Maybe I’ll write another post at a later date with my own theories on this, but it’s a bit too deep to dwell upon right now and I’m trying to keep tangential thoughts from taking over right now. If you know me well, you realize this is not always an easy thing for me to do… hehe.

Back to the topic at hand: while ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ took care of this seemingly insurmountable glitch in the current consensus of accepted logic with a mysterious little electronic component for the transporter called a Heisenberg compensator, an electronic device will intrinsically have macroscopic perception (as opposed to Quantum), which negates it’s ability to compensate for chaotic improbability. This stretch of possibilities did not deter from the Sci-Fi entertainment value of the show it aired in (episode 228 - Realm of Fear), but is one of the few technologies within the collection of Star Trek series which can be proved absolutely impossible with any degree of certainty.

With the impossibility of electronically breaking down and reassembling a human from one destination to another, I will try to introduce two more theoretically plausible ways to accomplish this task. In the first, the memory banks and DNA sequence would be sent as electronic impulses rather than breaking down and sending the entirety of the human. This would introduce a few new complications, but nothing I would consider insurmountable.

While it focuses more on mysticism and politics than any ‘real’ problem, several possible ‘complications’ could involve the duplication of the individual. The ‘departing’ individual would not actually depart. A duplicate individual, possibly minus physical defects born of their environment, would be produced. The removal of known harmful disease and viral organisms from incoming individuals was taken care of by the transporter biofilter in ‘ST: Next Gen’ (episode 133 - Unnatural Selection). This duplicate individual would have the same memory of life experiences previous to the transfer as the original along with the same physical cabilities. While the DNA could potentially be purposefully manipulated during transit to ‘improve’ the individual (removing defects such as amputation, obesity, etc, ad infinitum), that is a plot for another story… hehe. In effect, this would essentially be the same person; but, from the point of departure/arrival, their paths would diverge. One question is, where does the new individual’s soul come from? Alright, you must have known that was coming. I couldn’t help myself. Another potential problem based on duplication, which would easily be worked out with enough capital (as it is political), would be the legal identity of the new individual.

With this technology available, what’s to stop someone from creating a vast army of perfect soldiers for illicit purposes? I believe this topic has been covered enough in pop Sci-Fi, so I’ll leave it alone for now. I may bring it up again once the clone wars are instigated. You’ve been warned.

Of course, one potential problem pertains to certain organisms residing in the human body outside of our own DNA code that are required for some normal functions. Endosymbiant bacteria genomes were even found within the embryonic cell genomes of several different species of fruit fly by Michael B. Eisen, a UC Berkeley professor of molecular and cell biology and a faculty scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In fact, humans have more bacterial cells within their bodies than they do human cells. The beneficial symbiotic organisms within the human body, while still not all accounted for, could be theoretically reintroduced at the destination.

Another form of instantaneous transportation, which has no foreseeable (by me) complications when used in this (instantaneous) manner, would be a very ’simple’ cryogenically suspended trip through a calculable space/time anomaly. The individual would enter the cryo/transpo unit, which would then suspend them cryogenically and either physically travel to the nearest worm hole or black hole or, hopefully with some semblance of control, temporarily form it’s own on the spot for utilization.

The trip to the anomaly would have to be accounted for, as would the trip to the ultimate destination, but this could (theoretically) get an individual to any destination instantaneously. The problems, as I see them without much thought invested, exist in the unforeseeable (of course), the use of this method to travel back in time, and in traffic regulation to/from the anomaly to prevent collisions. What happens if you set the device to bring you back to the same time/location from whence you departed? BOOM! hehe…

Of course, as the Mayans believed that ‘modern’ civilization will cease to exist in 2012, this all may have to wait another 15 to 30 millennia to come to fruition. Haven’t even one of the three info packets left by the Atlanteans been discovered and studied yet? It’s getting late and this may be enough mental masturbation for one day. I really need to get myself into a polyphasic sleep cycle so this (pushing myself past my nap time) won’t happen any more. Hibernation time. G’nite!

I have finally got all the hiragana down. I can run through the online flash cards for 104 characters in random order with 100 percent recognition and I can write the hiragana in a,i,u,…ka,ki,ku… order or a,ka,sa,…i,ki,shi… order with only a couple of short mental farts.

I’ve even gone as far as learning about half of the katakana already. They are much easier once you learn the hiragana. I’ve also stumbled upon some really nice sites for learning elementary kanji. I’m now hoping to be familiar enough with the entire kana to start reading Japanese texts later today. I may not know what I’m reading, but at least I’ll be on my way to building my vocabulary… hehe.

This is an extremely stimulating mental workout. YOU should try it! Seriously though, if you only know one language, you should start now down the road to communication.

I think I just had a bit too much on my plate, so I decided to do something about it. I set the plate on the ground for the dog and decided to learn a foreign language. The main countries I want to visit some day are Belize, Australia and Japan. Belize is an English speaking country and I think I could fake my way through Australia… hehe. That leaves Japanese to learn.

Well, I’m a few days into my studies now, and I think I’m coming along nicely. I’ve got 30 of the basic 46 hiragana down pat. I’m using computer flash cards I built with html and writing the kana as far as I know it by hand constantly. Of course, I’m learning words like neko (cat), aka (red), and such as I learn the kana. I’ve also got a pretty good grasp of sentence structure, though I’m still a bit lost with particles. Give me a few more days and I’ll have hiragana and katakana down. I’ll keep studying vocabulary while learning the kana and be ready for 1st grade kanji within a week. Of course, in order to be considered literate, I’ll need to learn about 2000 kanji. That is the degree of literacy required of an elementary school graduate in Japan. I suppose I’m on my way, as I already know about 10… hehe.

Along side my lessons, I’m remodeling my kitchen. I’ve redone the cabinets in a glossy white and gave the doors a distressed white eggshell finish. I’ll be putting glossy black hardware on these soon. I put a white tile back-splash behind the stove, and I’m now putting white tile between the upper cabinets and countertops. I’ll continue the white tile around the room between upper chair rail and lower chair rail. I’m putting white wainscoting below the lower chair rail. The walls are now yellow (above the upper chair rail). I’ve installed new lighting in the ceiling, two sconces and a few under-cabinet lights. Soon, I will be installing the copper pot rack I’ve had for over a year. I’m installing a light natural stone tile on the floor. It should lead nicely to the hardwood floors I uncovered and refinished in the rest of the house.

Now, tell me. You think I’m not loosing my frig’nipplin’ mind?!? LOL! Actually, I did finish most of my projects before jumping into this past weekend with a change of pace. I’m down to just one studio project that isn’t wrapped up, though another will be starting in about a week. I’ve got most of my web design projects pretty much wrapped up except a little bit of pro bono work (I’m on it, Shannon!) and some of my personal sites. I don’t foresee anything keeping me from finishing my kitchen within a week or so and learning Japanese enough to speak with a bit of fluency within a month or so. OK, so maybe I’ll still sound like a struggling gaijin, but I should be able to at least carry on a conversation about the weather, music and web design by then.

Until next time… this is Marvin Zindler with EEEeeeeeyewitness News. I don’t think we’re in Houston anymore, Tico.

Alright, I’ve decided to try w.bloggar on my windoze pc. It seams to have everything I could need to keep my blog up to date without any hassles from what I’ve read about it online. We’ll see. It doesn’t take much. I’d like to be able to see my categories, different blogs, and all my existing posts and be able to modify any of them from here.

I used a carriage return before this paragraph. I’m not sure if w.bloggar automatically creates paragraphs when I use a carriage return or not. I’ll throw a couple of paragraphs in without paragraph tags to see. In fact, I’m gonna delete the paragraph tags I’ve already got here to see if it posts carriage returns as paragraphs. Then, I can check out it’s editing of existing posts once I know how it marks pages up (or not).

Well, judging from the preview window within w.bloggar, it throws break tags into the mix if I use a carriage return. I’ll just stick with using my own paragraph tags in the posts.

It would be really nice if this program would use ’strong’ tags instead of ‘bold’ tags when I use the included markup tools. Sadly, it uses ‘italics’ tags instead of the proper ‘emphasis’ tags as well. Heck, maybe I should just take the 15 seconds necessary to log into my blog using a browser and publish that way. At least then, I know I’m getting to use all of the features my blog has available (besides remote publishing… hehe).

By the way, I don’t see anywhere to input a heading in this thing. I did when I had it aiming at my b2evolution site, but not with my blogger site. Oh well, here goes everything.

I just added the Performancing extension to my Firefox. I just want to see how it does at adding posts to my blog.

I’m also typing this up in it’s ’source editing’ mode, so the page will come through the way I want it to (hopefully). I’ll have a look at what it does with technorati tags in a minute, but I already see it’s integration with del.icio.us is pretty minimal at best. It simply logs into your account so that you can manually add bookmarks and lets you see your tags.

Enough of this; I’m gonna send this through and see what happens. This paragraph should be styled as white text on a maroon background, by the way.

Everyone that knows me also knows that I love my Macintosh computers. Recently, I’ve been in the process of buying my parents a computer system in order to pull them out of their Windoze rut. I know they will be totally blown away by the new found freedom and happiness that this will bring them.

It all started with my old beige 266MHz G3 desktop unit. I haven’t even touched this computer for years and so began fixing it up with extra RAM, a bigger hard drive, and all the other components necessary for contemporary usage. While browsing around ebaY for peripherals and enhancements to make my parents’ conversion an even more pleasurable one, I just happened to accidentally purchase a 266MHz Macintosh G3 All-In-One. I just threw down the starting bid (which the installed hard drive was well worth) and ended up getting my parents a serious upgrade. This is an inconceivably good computer for the price at which they are going these days. It is basically a beige iMac with 3 PCI slots. It will run up to OS X.2.8 natively and OS X.3.7 (the newest version to date) with XPostFacto, which is a small boot program to run OS X on ‘Old World’ (ie. ‘beige’) Macs.

I then stumbled upon a ridiculously low price for a 333MHz Beige G3 MidTower. The fever was setting in. I couldn’t help it, and my parents already own a bigger monitor than the AIO’s, anyhow. In most respects, it is the same as the AIO, but has no monitor built in, is a bit faster, will accept more RAM and has room for more internal drives.

While setting this up, it dawned on me that this was the last of the ‘Old World’ Macs ever made. If I could just… yep, there it was. In all it’s shining glory (and for a price I just could NOT pass up), there was a ‘Blue and White’ 350MHz G3 on ebaY that would run OS X.3.7 natively and had firewire, USB and all the goodies that I would like my parents to have in their first Macintosh computer built right in. I just received this today and will be setting it up as soon as I finish this post and log off of here.

So, less than $200 later (for all 3!!!), I find myself with a wonderful machine for my parents, an All-In-One computer for the kitchen (an extremely glorified recipe book/ egg timer/ pantry inventory and grocery list/ DVD player), and a home network router/ web server which will allow my Dual 533MHz G4 to be devoted to making music and my 500MHz G3 Pizmo laptop to be devoted to web development and browsing. Of course, I will still browse the web and make music on every one of them… hehe. I believe it is in my best interest to sign off of here now and get this thing packaged up and out the door BEFORE signing on to ebaY again. I feel the need for a nice cold drink to bring this fever down. Salut!

As a side note, but in no way insignificant, I just found a small freeware/donationware app for OS X (which also works in *nix) yesterday that has totally changed my workflow for the better! It is called Desktop Manager and allows multiple desktops without multiple monitors. It has a very small footprint and is absolutely the best productivity enhancing application I have found for the Macintosh to date. To find out more and try it out for yourself, get over to VersionTracker and search for ‘Desktop Manager’ in the OSX section. There are a lot of good reviews and ratings that will convince you to try it out if MHO hasn’t.

I love this time of year, but not for the typically touted reasons. I like it that Mother Nature is all but asleep, which allows us (those of us on a never-ending quest to tame and arrange her for our own pleasure) to occupy ourselves with indoor endeavors. My yard is a glorious mixture of reclining fawn overgrowth and hibernating seed. Come Spring, I will surely be all but in thrall to it once more, but for now, I am peacefully lulled by the low murmer of a few ventilation fans and the occasional rustle of a hard drive spinning up or down.

I received a new bass guitar for Christmas that will surely raise the amount of time I spend with my composition. It is an Ibanez EGA 900 in flat silver finish. It has magnetic and piezo pickups for an outstanding amount of tonal variation. It is also constructed of luthite, a substance developed specifically for the tonal qualities it allows musical instruments that are composed of it. Actually, I haven’t received it yet. It is currently en route via delivery truck and should be here any day. I am absolutely thrilled to be given such a devastatingly beautiful instrument, however undeserving I may be.

I have been toiling away on my newest web project for the past few months, and it is nearly ready for the mass marketing of a major site. It is Illinois Underworld, which is a web site for the unsigned original musicians of Illinois. It is a place where they can sell their wares as well as advertise their upcoming shows and share knowledge with each other. As I know many of these musicians in my local area, it will be nice to have a place to meet and discuss ideas relevant to promoting and furthering our common interests without the need to adjust or compromise personal schedules in order to meet in the real world. There are still a few parts of the site I need to iron out, and a few that aren’t even implemented yet, but it’s coming along. Feel free to check the site out and let me know what you think here.

I will try to keep on top of updating this journal in the future, if for no other reason than to help me organize my thoughts and schedule in a visible manner. I have some great plans for the next year, and believe writing about them as they develop will certainly help me to visualize changes to plans and routes to goals in a more effective manner.

A lot has transpired since I last wrote here. I am still not back to work (for pay, anyways), but I’ve been getting a tonne of stuff done here at home. I’ve lined two future wildflower beds with mums, boulders and red cedar mulch in the back yard. This will give an awesome effect once the bluegrass sod goes down. I’m hoping to get to that in the next week. The raised flower beds along the back fence are done (built, planted and mulched), as well as the flower beds in the main body of the front yard. I will post pix when I’m done. This yard will be great for my honey and I to relax in when the plants grow up.

I’ve also built a small web site for a couple of friends. They are starting a lawn service called Lawn Ninjas. I registered and built www.lawnninjas.com for them and hosted it on my computer at home. It’s actually just a web page (singular), but may grow as they do. I will probably use it to test new web design ideas in a simple environment. Maybe I’ll surprise them with an admin section where they can store all of their customer info into a database and keep track of their finances. Any comments on things I can add to this site would be appreciated. They just wanted a single ‘business card’ page, but I’m sure they wouldn’t mind a full fledged site (whether necessary or not).

I will try to keep this blog going, but sleep calls now. Maybe I should try to write earlier in the day when my mind is fresher.