OK so computer nerd.  Today a triangle experiment with Microsoft office.  Built in the Microsoft office is a voice recognition system that supposedly will translate what you speak directly into type.  Since I’ve been playing around with voice over IP and other different Internet technologies that figure to know what I give this a try to.  So this blog entry is being written completely with the voice recognition provided by Microsoft office. 

It didn’t do too bad of a job but I’ve found that when I got tired it did tend to make a few errors.  It’s actually not too bad but it’s strange just dictating what you’re thinking I find that the full of my speech is not necessarily the same low as one I would write.  Sometimes it gets the words correct sometimes it doesn’t and sometimes it just interprets me completely will.  But you know what if you have it and you have the time to train it maybe it’s worth doing if you’re one of those people who do not like to type.  It certainly times faster than I can that still is strange getting used to just speaking about typing.

So I apologize in advance if this entry is a little hard to read but like I said it was dictated without me having to type a single word.  It really is a hoot.  And it is really surprising how much it’s correct if you think about it. 

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When you read a blog entry, be it just a bit of fancy or a poem or some piece of experimental writing, how do you approach it? Do you just read it or do you try to make something of it?

It says a lot about the person when they step beyond the realm of simple talk and actually write it down. They are in fact trying to tell you something about themselves and they have chosen a very public forum. Can you think of a more public forum than a blog?

For me, I try to get into the head of the person who wrote it. I want to see what they are seeing, feel what they are feeling, know what they are experiencing. There are layers to writing. When a person goes even beyond just writing and formats the writing as a poem or some other experimental prose, that is saying even more.

For instance, I wrote a piece called “I wish for.” Several people commented on it, both here and another blog and turns out they read it but did not get it. They read the words and so the comments I got were, “That really make no sense” or “... small in the scheme of things, disappointing.”

Would they have written the same thing had they figured out what I was really writing about? In this case it was the wishes we (or I in this case) make during our lives. There is a progress of years and maturity within the wishes, finally the last section of the wishes I may make.

This piece was definitely experimental. But I have come across other prose here and elsewhere that calls out for the same kind of thought by the reader. We should all take a moment when presented with a piece that seems “different” and ask ourselves, is that all the author meant or is there something more here. I bet if we took the extra moment or two to look for a pattern or understand more deeply we would all get a lot more out of it.

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I watch but you can’t see me,
I listen and you can’t hear me.

I wander the halls of reason,
Feeling very out of season.

In a room filled extremely crowded,
My thoughts are still enshrouded.

With ideas of fanciful flight,
Soaring on a starlit night.

Or maybe lavished as a royal,
In a life completely free of toil.

On the trails of a savage hunt,
The key actor in every stunt.

Dreams of the highly erotic,
Draw me in, quite hypnotic.

Ranging a world of suppositions,
Never make a personal admission.

I watch and you don’t know me,
I listen but you can’t phase me.

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OK, I know what I needed to get out of the funk, some really good music to get me excited.

I am fortunate today… I found a new group to listen to, now all I have to do is get the CD. The new group, “Toxic Audio". Bet you can’t gues what kind of music they do… go on guess… [BUZZER NOISE] wrong… try again… [BUZZER NOISE] wrong again… they sing A capella vocals… and they do it really well.

Think of them as a cross between Forever Plaid, Manhattan Transfer, Wierd Al, Abba, and Up With People. Tighter vocals than Plaid, smoother than Transfer and no instruments to get in the way, the humor of Al, the energy of Abba, and the feel good of People and you have Toxic Audio. They cover just about anything you want to hear from “If I Only Had A Brain” to “Stand By Me” and do with a style all their own. It is rare that I am excited about a new group, but this one I certainly am.

Call me crazy, but what do I use as a test of whether a vocal group is good or not? The “Star Spangled Banner”. Yep. It is generally one song just about every vocal group learns because they are often asked to perform it for whatever reason. So I use that as a standard as to how good they are. I guess I am not alone in this, because there on their page, a link to the “Star Spangled Banner” for everyone to judge for themselves. Wow… they blew me away. Broke the funk. BTW, if you are going to listen to this, be sure to use good headphones because the speaker in a little computer or laptop will not handle the quality, and even so, it is obvious that the MP3 is not handling the quality either. It is that good. Then check out the Other Toxic Audio Clips... you’ll love it.

There was another guy I recently got in the same mood for, and he broke me out of another funk, his name is Matisyahu. He is a Hasidic Jew singing Reggae. Yeah Reggae of all things. He is really good as well. I highly suggest you check him out too. Good lyrics, good beat, and none of the negativity that some associate with Reggae. If you can take a bit of Hebrew, you’ll love it.

Then there are the two others that usually do get me out of a funk that I totally forgot about. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Cherry Poppin’ Daddys. BBVD actually has a new live album (I have seen them live, they are great, see them too if you can) out that I should get (along with all of their others, but that is another story), and of course there is the hunt for that elusive second CPD album , not Zoot Suit Riot…

Other than that, I like Barbershop music. Yeah, makes sense if I like Toxic Audio right? Well, I used to sing it as well, and I do kinda miss it… maybe I will get that going again… Anyway… if you are in the mood for BSQ, check out these Quartets, my faves… The Buffalo Bills (they are the one that appear in “The Music Man” movie), The Suntones, Boston Commons, The Acustixand FRED (a comedy group, very good.)

Have fun. 

It has been one of those weeks so far, everything seems so surreal and tense and it has put me in a kind of funk. It can’t all be because I have not been able to solve a programming issue, or not really working. And for whatever reason, it isn’t money. That doesn’t leave much to be bothering me.

Love life? Not really, that has been ok lately, no complaints, if a little lacking, but no complaints.

Family? Yeah, there is missing my daughter, but that is an ongoing thing. And while I do miss her, I have learned to accept it and move on.

Future? Yeah, well, that may be it. It does not feel like I am making enough progress and I am used to making progress in some way or another. I know that this project could be very good and who knows where it ends up, so I plug away at it hoping that it works out.

Health? Well, I finally got rid of that cold that was plaguing me, that is a good thing. Been feeling ok otherwise, if a little warn out, but that just leads to the age old diagnosis of depression. Maybe just a slight level of general depression. I know I have been a little depressed, been that way for a long time. Maybe I need Prozac or something. I don’t know. Anything that may help at this point.

All I know is I need something to snap me out of this malaise. Usually I would drive, but at the cost of gas these days… who knows how much that would cost at a time when I do need to be frugal. Maybe next week…

So, I have to unwind… some good things to unwind… read, movies, drive, game (RPG, but I do not have my usual cast of friends around me anymore for that), sex and skirt chasing (yes and no), something else? I don’t know… got to figure it out.

You know, for me there are time that I can get fairly obsessive. OK, it can happen a lot of the time. But usually it only happens when I have a puzzle to solve. And so I have not been blogging much because I have been obsessing over a piece of programming.

I can’t help it. When I get a puzzle in my head, especially one that I have the answer to (but just can’t see) I get obsessed with finishing the task. I hate it.

In this case I am writing a plugin for this website, one that will list the categories to the right better and with more flexibility. I have all the data, done all the calculations, but I can’t seem to get the hierarchical ordering to work. I know if I was doing this in PERL I would be done. Not a problem. I would run it through sort-tree or something and done. Or I would write a simple sub routine that does this. But PHP has neither a sort-tree function (believe it or not) nor does it have subroutines. It does have functions, but they do not work the same way. So, I am at a loss.

Recursive functions, I have always hated them. Understand them, just hate them.

So I obsess until I have it done.

••••

OK, is it a mental flaw? Do I have OCD or some such? I don’t know. I don’t care, I just want to have it finished. It is literaly costing me sleep. It is invading my thoughts. I am daydreaming about the problem, then I am dreaming about it at nigh. Hell, I have figured out at least three ways of solving the problem, but I am not finding the programming language to do it.  I can probably brute force the problem, and I may have to, but I want an elegant solution.

Yes, it is not good enough for me to solve the problem, it has to be an elegant solution along with the getting the job done. I think of it like an art form, just with computer code. I guess I really am crazy.

Quietly last week, the FAA gave approval (via Business Wire) to LiftPort Group to begin High Altitude Testing of a robotic lift system into LEO (Low Earth Orbit). This “Space Elevator” has been a shared dream of mine for the last 25 years, and now it looks like it may finally happen.

So what the heck does that mean? Well, in Science Fiction circles it was often referred to as a “Bean Stalk” after the “Jack and the Beanstalk” fame of a vine that grew so tall it entered into another world. In this case the Bean Stalk grows all the way into space and allows an elevator to move up and down the line. A “Space Elevator” in all respects. In the Sixties it was referred to as a “Space Train” (especially in the Soviet Union) and in the has been woven into Science Fiction books like “Friday” by Robert Heinlein and various others. It may be apocryphal, but the idea may have been floated originally by Robert Heinlein himself in the early 50’s. I know from first hand knowledge that Robert Heinlein considered himself the originator for the idea of a Space Elevator, saying to me personally he had written about it in the mid 50’s and the idea floated from there. I cannot find proof of this however.

Anyway, for the first time in human history we may finally have the mean to escape this planet safely and inexpensively. The estimates for the costs is about $10 billion dollars per Bean Stalk and take between 5 and 10 years to build. Imagine, by 2015, the Space Shuttle will no longer be needed and we will have a real foothold in space. Want to vacation in space? No problem. Trip to the Moon? Pricey, but very do-able. Be a migrant to Mars? Absolutely. Beyond? We can go there.

Does anyone think that $10 billion is too much for such a structure? It is the ultimate in cheap travel into space. The fuel to get up the Bean Stalk is electricity (and not very much) and the fuel coming down is electricity. In fact is it negative electricity. The cost of going up is paid by the cost of coming down (the elevator car will actually generate electricity offsetting the cost of the trip up.) Net cost up there and back? Next to nothing. Reliable? How reliable are the trains?

The only way this will be possible is with a revolution in materials science, and that happened (again quietly) last year with the successful fabrication of carbon nano-tubes. Like all tech, the cost for the first one was expensive, but now that we know how, it is a cheap and abundant supply of extremely strong fibers good enough to make this dream happen.

The next step is the “boot strapping” to get things started. A small platform will have to be put in space with to ballasts, a spool or carbon nano-tube fiber, and a mechanism to both lower and drop the weights into earths atmosphere and out further into space. The ballast off set leaving the space platform where it is. As the line drops slowly to earth it will be captured and anchored. Once the top end finishes uncoiling (it has a lot further to go) small robots will wind up and down the thread re-enforcing it. This will go on for years as slowly the beanstalk takes form. Eventually the rest of the platform is lifted up on the space cable and there you have it… a space elevator. Ten years from now… wow.

If the human race was looking for the signal for the next step into our future, this is it. Safe, Cheap, Efficient. Bean Stalk, let’s go!

OK, here is a low-down of what is possible with the Miasma Of Musings blogging system. This topic was brought up by TexasRose and I felt I had to deal with it. So, with that in mind I created a series of blog entries to illustrate what is possible with this software. The articles have been back dated so that they do not show up on the top of the blogging list, but I wrote them today. Here is a list of the entries:

• Standard Entry, No Images
• Standard Entry, Inline Image Left
• Standard Entry, Inline Image Right
• Standard Entry, Mutilple Images
• Standard Entry, Horizontal Image
• Icon Entry; Size of Icon
• Icon Entry; Not this
• Icon Entry; With Other HTML

So, I would suggest that the blogger on this site take a look at them, and check them out from time to time as I may update these entries as well.