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: September 14-20, 2015

Summary of this week:

Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday - Friday - Saturday - Sunday

Monday September 14, 2015

It is Monday. The world has yet to resume its rotation.

A look at the tech startup and investment world of Minnesota. It seems to work just fine.

Player tracking in the NFL via RFID. Perhaps something interesting will come of it.

More advances in prosthetics and restoring feeling and mobility to the paralyzed.

Check out the Google Chrome extension called Language Immersion. It helps you learn a foreign language by gradually switching English to the chosen language.

Russian government requires data about Russians to be stored in Russia. Some tech companies are in, some are not.

Google (or is is Alphabet) hires a car veteran to run its own car division.

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Tuesday September 15, 2015

Some thoughts on the office of the present or future. Walking meetings? I've always liked those.

A Russian court rules against an American company (Google). Not a surprise regardless of the subject.

Apple will probably break last years record of 10million iPhones sold on opening weekend. Is this a phone or a movie?

Apple's latest push into the workplace with the big iPad.

The Lumenati CS1: take the Super8 camera body, add lenses, add an iPhone, and you have a new video camera. I love the idea.

Once again NASA shows that even though it can't put a person into space it can make cool videos. A waste of taxpayers' money.

Germany and other European countries now close their borders to refugees. Reality hits hard.

The Russians move into Syria with tanks.

Visible Light Communication, Linux light bulbs, and Disney. Watch out kids for the Internet of Toys.

Intel establishes the Automotive Security Review Board (ASRB) to try to put security into all these not-so-smart cars.

A computer at Imperial College London "learns" how to play chess by itself and plays at a Master level. Of course it is the software written by a person that does the "magic."

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Wednesday September 16, 2015

This is disturbing, disgusting, and unAmerican. People, a bunch of people, should be fired. 14 year old boy builds a clock; adults say it "looks like a bomb," boy arrested. This is terrible. I don't want to hear about fear of this and that and so on. This is a case of some adults being just plain stupid.

Lenovo expands the definition of Ultrabook and Thinkpad. Great machine.

Google has a new fund-raising campaign for refugees that will raise $11million. Good for Google.

Hungary erects new walls to refugees as do other European nations.

HP will cut 30,000 jobs in its split. Awful news.

Have we reached the era of the open-source car?

Target is to have its own same-day grocery delivery. Take that Amazon.

Apple is draining the brains from Tesla.

Good news, IMHO, iOS 9 stresses efficiency and requires much less memory.

Is the sharing economy dead? Are we just too rich to do the work to save resources?

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Thursday September 17, 2015

Schneier on the clock boy arrest: "We simply have to stop terrorizing ourselves. We just look stupid when we do it."

The clock boy is invited to Facebook and the White House. No mention if anyone in Irving, TX will be fired. Oh, I forget, in government, stupidity is not a basis for dismissal.

More details on the stupid follow-up to the stupid situation. Gosh.

Hungarian government forces hit refugees with water cannons and tear gas. Can you imagine how bad life is in Syria so that people flee to things like this?

Google (Alphabet) R&D efforts cost up to $4billion a year. That is business for adults. The faint of heart need not apply.

Google is hiring Amazon engineers for wearable tech projects.

iOS9 is now available for download.

The Kardashian website was hacked with information on 600,000 users exposed. They had a website? They had 600,000 users? Wow!

Some history on Mozilla and Firefox. It changed the world.

I hope they thought this through, but I have my doubts. New iRobot Roomba maps your house via camera. Let's see. It photographs all the things in your home and connects to the Internet so that theives can see if it is worth breaking in to steal and they also see all methods of entry. Clever.

Did you know the Microsoft Zune service still existed?

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Friday September 18, 2015

Croatia closes its borders to refugees. Reality is hitting Europe.

Photos of a new Apple retail store in Belgium with indoor trees.

Some details emerge about the next generation Chromecast from Google.

A look at the Texas hoax bomb law, no, this is not made up.

iOS 9 hits 12% adoption in just 24 hours.

Microsoft donates $75million to computer science education. Much of it goes to US public schools. Good luck with that.

Google's Internet services comprise 2billion lines of code.

Amazon introduces a new line of tablets and TV streamers. Tablets $50 and up.

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Saturday September 19, 2015

Google schedules a big event for September 29th.

Due to leaks at the DMV, it appears that Apple's self-driving car is real and almost here.

iOS 9 hits another mark: 21% adoption in 48 hours.

The stupidity in the clock boy story never ends. The Police are still holding the clock.

D-Link mistakenly released a cryptography key. oooops, sorry.

These guys built a scale model of the solar system that is 7 miles long. What is your hobby?

SpaceX claims to have $7billion in space launch bookings.

Microsoft has built a Linux distribution to runs its Azure data centers.

This story is all over the Internet, so it must be important: the EPA says Volkswagon cheated on emissions regulations in its diesel cars.

Be careful what you retweet as our FBI believes retweeting means endorsing the original.

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Sunday September 20, 2015

A look at the Huawei Watch running Android. It looks like a watch. Imagine that.

It is Sunday; let's look at something silly—a selfie stick with a spoon on one end.

Must see video: little drones weave a rope bridge that can support people.

A group of people with lots of money want to put a Concorde back in the air. It is a hobby, and it is their money, so...

Thoughts on how Apple's HomeKit can change our homes; we hope for the better.

It appears that the US and China are trying to agree not to kill people with cyber tools. It is quite easy to turn off the power to a hospital on the other side of the world and cause the death of hundreds of persons.

A good list of 12 good books on writing.

I love this one: writing 1,000 poems on a manual typewriter. The typewriter allows you to publish on a piece of paper that is practically any size and shape.

Tips on fitting writing around your real job from several people who do it.

The benefits of having a one-page book proposal in your pocket.

Finding ways to stop your work and do something else for a (long) while.

Thoughts on what to do while staring at a blank page.

Guidance on writing the synopsis of your own novel.

Great advice: "write as much as you want." Quantity and quality are not exclusive even though we can easily find examples to back each side of the discussion.

Help in the writers' endless search for content.

Thinking of quitting your job and becoming a full-time writer? Please, read this first.

The writer and the used bookstore. Enter with care as you may never leave.

Marketing via social media. Do it do it do it do it...

Thoughts on moving back into writing "shape."

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