Dwayne Phillips ' Day Book
Items
I happen to view each day. Science, Techonology, Management, Culture,
and of course Writing
This is my day book for this week. I have modeled this after science
fiction and computer writer Jerry Pournelle's view, or as he calls it,
his Day Book.
I encourage you to see Jerry
Pournelle's site
and subscribe
to his services.
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This
week: August 19-25, 2013
Summary of this week:
- Georgia Tech to offer an MS in Computer Science online - expects 10,000 students
- Quiet time as people wait for the Samsung watch and the new iPhones
- Amazon is building warehouses - $14Billion worth
- Steve Ballmer to retire from Microsoft in next 12 months
Monday
- Tuesday
- Wednesday
- Thursday
- Friday
- Saturday
- Sunday
Monday August 19, 2013
The Jobs movie did poorly at the box office over the weekend.
Georgia Tech will offer an online MS in Computer Science at $6,600.
The on campus version costs $45,000! They expect 10,000 students,
mostly from foreign countries as the students will not need visas.
Okay, State Department, now what? America will educate the world and
the world will whip us economically.
A system that permits writing software faster by speech than by typing. You have to learn a sort of gibberish language, but it works.
The experiences of one work-from-home IT administrator.
Vogue has a big article on Marissa Mayer. I think that in over five
years of this little blog-like thing I do, that is the first mention of
Vogue magazine.
Small tablets? Samsung to release a 12" tablet.
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Tuesday August 20, 2013
A look at the Nexus 30" IPS monitor.
20% of iPhone owners were using an Android phone last year.
Like everyone else, Apple's computer sales (Macs) are falling.
The British government destroys disk drives owned by The Guardian.
The paper continues to report on surveillance because much of its
online reporting occurs from outside the UK. We are in a new age. The
nation state, while still important, is fading.
You can now get WD-40 in a pen.
ASUS has a motherboard with a Thunderbolt 2 port, that's 20GigaBitsPerSecond.
Must see video: an F-35 does a vertical, night landing on a ship. That is quite difficult to acheive, but here we are.
Another buy-your-own quadcoptor drone for less than $1,000.
Kids in Delaware built a 112-foot Lego tower. A new world record.
Intel has its own LTE processor and it claims it is more powerful and more power-efficient than the competition.
Microsoft continues its integration of Skype and Outlook.
An interesting site: pineapple.io collects tutorials.
More bad news for Windows 8 tablets from Dell - they will only sell models that come with keyboards.
The surprising slump in the tech economy.
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Wednesday August 21, 2013
The smartphone in church.
How about having referees and umpires wear Google Glass so the fan can see what the ref saw? Of course the field of vision in the Glass is not the same, so the experience wouldn't be quite right.
Internet.org - trying to bring the Internet to the 2/3s of the world that doesn't have it.
It is not just American humans - it seems that most species in America are getting fatter.
The Mobiserv project - robotics and other tech to aid the elderly. Excellent.
Germany continues to set and break its own records for solar and wind energy.
Another day, another revelation about the NSA's surveillance of American citizens.
This training software stops the training if you look away from it too long, i.e., it monitors your eye movements. Simple, probably effective, and certainly not "icky" as the linked piece says.
Amazon is spending about $14Billion on new warehouses across the U.S.
Kodak is trying to emerge from bankruptcy. They will be a commercial printing company that sells nothing to the average consumer. Too bad.
One
reason for lower rates of broadband use in rural areas is that these
areas have more elderly people who just don't use the Internet and they
are just fine without it.
The most popular journal or notebook: Moleskine. Others are: Field Notes, Leuchtturm1917, Rhodia, and Whitelines.
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Thursday August 22, 2013
No Internet viewing today as I was travelling.
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Friday August 23, 2013
An in-depth look at Google's updated Nexus 7.
A high school in Ames Iowa is giving 1,400 students MacBook Air computers. Cost is $1.4Million. I never ever want to hear anyone say there is not enough money for education.
Apple computers with the newer Intel processors are about to hit the stores. This post is about the iMac and this post is about the MacBook Pro.
The future is the Ubuntu Edge which blends the cell phone and home computer. But the Edge may never be built.
A Kickstarter project, the Modus III is a docking station for the iPad so you can use it as a desktop computer.
This is similar to the Ubuntu Edge idea. You have one computer that you
use everywhere. Accessories make the computer more useful in some
places. As long as there is a backup of all data somewhere, this should
work.
Google's definition box improves - a bit deal for those of us writers who forget words. And I happen to be a writer who forgets what seem to be the simplest words.
The NASDAQ stopped trading yesterday due to technical difficulties.
Coming real soon now, the Hot Watch, yes, it has a cell phone in it.
Steve Ballmer will be retiring from Microsoft this year.
The woes continue at HP; what can save the company?
It costs a lot to build a company, an awful lot.
Our President, with the best intentions, want the Federal government to be more involved in college education. What could possibly go wrong?
Baby boomers are retiring, and will be replaced by part-time workers. Will they care as much?
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Saturday August 24, 2013
Another day, another NSA abuse of power story.
We now have a(n unauthorized) biography of Marissa Mayer.
Google moves towards making its own self-driving car and creating a driver-less taxi service. This tech and type of service was predictable and predicted.
By announcing his retirement, Steve Ballmer caused his personal stock holdings to rise about $1Billion.
DARPA and Stanford advancing robotics with a three-fingered model.
An iPad mini costs about $500, which is half of what college textbooks for a semester cost.
Yikes! The college textbook industry is stealing from us. Anyways,
little Lynn University is issuing the iPads instead of textbooks to
incoming freshmen.
Coca-Cola goes green with packaging and ingredients. Will they go back to putting cocaine in the mixture? That is a natural ingredient.
I continue a road trip with spotty Internet access.
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Sunday August 25, 2013
Thoughts on the world exonomy in light of history and technology and all the problems with the middle class.
Windows 8.1 has an October 17th release date.
It seems that there are no clusters of scientists and engineers in the U.S. These people live in the same clusters as everyone else.
There is the possibility of NASA launching a space-based solar power source in 2025.
Jerry Pournelle urged this over the first Iraq war 20 years ago. No one
listened to him, and here we are, more than a decade away from a
prototype and still spending hundreds of billion$ every year in the
middle East.
Motorola is bringing back the sliding, physical QWERTY keyboard to call phones. It worked quite well.
Tesla and its luxury electric cars outsold the big name brands in California.
I would take that as a predictor of the future as this is a very small
market - $100,000+ electric cars. The 99% won't be buying these.
Most writers sit a lot, and back pain ensues. Here are some notes. Take care of yourself.
Advice on writing from famous writers.
There are many options for freelance writers. Go for them all. You might hit on something.
Thoughts on creating and enjoying a writer's group.
One freelancer's lessons from success.
What some of us writers understand about writing - it is not a hobby.
Some people have worked their way through college as freelancers, so though it is not for everyone, it is possible.
The voices that writers hear as interuptions. Some are from real people, the most bothersome are from inside our own heads.
Slow down. Rest. Then work.
Stuck with writing? Go someplace else physically and try again.
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