Ah Memories

So laying about today, I re-re-read the graphic novel "Kingdom Come" by Mark Waid and Alex Ross, which reminded me that I had apparently irked Mark at a Wizard? party(It was a ComicCon party anyway), once by referring to his children as ratballs, a name I use affectionately for mine, granted I do call my youngest 'Weasel' so I can understand the misunderstanding.

Well the amusing part of this story is I didn't actually remember the conversation the next time I saw Mark (who gave me an annoyed nod) and I referred to him as 'that Mark guy" to my comic creation colleague David. David's response was a terse and incredulous, "You mean Mark Waid of the GN you love Kingdom Come?" What can I say, but that I probably uttered one of my favorite lines from Gross Point Blank, "Dumb F**king Luck!", and went back to oogling cosplay fangirls.

Over the years, likely not remembering the insult, but remembering me, Mark always said a polite hello or caught the Nerf football I was tossing around after the show, etc. Anyway, the last time I saw Mark we were at a panel, when asked by a fan about how or when he comes up with his best ideas, he said and I paraphrase here, 'when he is at his most relaxed', (and I thought dammit! He's just like me), and he finishes with 'when he is peeing'. (Damn it I thought, that's my line.)

Anyway, if you like graphic novels and alternate universes, histories, or futures, Kingdom Come is one of the best. Well that and Alex Ross art work simply rocks.

I have the watch, do I need the cellphone?

Kinetic energy, is it green? ;)

I thought this was a really good idea until, I actually pondered it for a moment. Those of you that know me, know I am prone to sending my beloved blackberry flying into the air in a horrendous and often plastic smashing arc for no apparent reason other than a caffeine induced spasm. Now imagine me with a kinetically charged blackberry. Can you say crunch?

"Shake It
If you've ever had your commute ruined when your iPod or cell phone runs out of juice, there's not much you can do but kick your phone around, which usually makes things worse.

But now all that misdirected anger could go to a better cause — and your kinetic energy could actually be used to charge your devices.

The technology has been around in self-winding watches and battery-less flashlights for years, but some designers are applying the charge model to music players and other small electronics to great effect."

Quote of the Day

so I won't delve deeply into whether or not it's lame that I have a quote of the day gadget on my home page, but one of today's quotes rings particularly true to my tech ears.

'The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents.'
- Nathaniel Borenstein

Quantum musing reminds me

If you like hard science and are interested in physics, I am also reading The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe by Roger Penrose. I picked this book up after reading The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene. While I enjoyed The Elegant Universe it lacked the actual formulas and I found reading about the intricacies of the theories frustrating without the actual math around to look at. Roger Penrose does not shy away from the formulas, though at over 1,000 pages it is not a book to pick up lightly. If you are new to String Theory and want to check it out, the August 2005 edition of Discover has a great article by Michio Kaku, one of the founders of the theory. If you can find a back copy, and I just realized he is on the Science channel now all the time, and maybe a tad bit over exposed.

If you are a true lunatic like me, Wikipedia, it has some great articles, you can get lost in the links for hours.

Quantum Radio

So I really enjoy reading Cosmic Log, especially for post like 'One Quantum Leap' about Quantum entanglement. Specifically the use of Quantum teleportation, "as in the transfer of information from one place to the other without passing through any physical medium." Which would have likely been needed to run the wonderfully lag free Matrix.

This work pretty much leads up to real time Internet from Mars using quantum computer mated pairs, one there one here. I wish I had one now, because it would solve the bandwidth issues I have stopping me from using the Cloud computing model for a few projects I have lined up.

Blogging

4 years ago now a colleague and I had a web comic, which was frankly way to much work, but on that website we each blogged, and I must say that was fun.