Caution: Singularity Ahead [DEFUNCT]

I remembered to add "Go looking for those white science-y books I borrowed from the library a lot as a kid; you know, the ones about robots, or future cities, and such. Maybe by Osborne?" to my TODO list today. And unlike the last time, I found one! The Usborne Book of the Future, by Kenneth Gatland, illustrated by David Jefferis, Usborne Publishing, 1979. Even better, found scans of the whole thing online. Skimming through it, I vividly remember pretty much every page. Wow. Apparently, this book taught me everything I know. I'm sure I sailed through many classes in elementary school simply by regurgitating what I'd learned from it.

Caspian stayed with S & A last night, so Susan, Annette and I hit the town. Short summary for posterity: Catch a free limo ride to Union & Fillmore Several rounds of drinks at MATRIXFILLMORE More drinking and some calamari at Betelnut I dimly recall a bus ride back to Union & Grant Drinks until last call at a bar on Grant - maybe Savoy-Tivoli ? Walking home, a half block from our house we find that the folks renovating the former Buca Giovani are having a party... the basement is now a very bumping club. Annette convinces the doorman to waive the cover. Free drinks and dancing. (Hangover + headcold = !fun)  

Back in January I mentioned that I felt old fashioned: I still pay for a landline I carry a PDA, not a smartphone  I only run one IM client I buy my music online, but on plastic things called "CDs" I’ve only bought a few ringtones and games for my phone. (And $5 for a MIDI file seems outrageous!) I only download obscure TV shows over P2P I still use e-mail to communicate with my friends I have more stuff stored on my hard drive than in the cloud Time for some updates: Su and I are planning to cut the landline in SF. We get WiFi and Satellite TV with our rent, so apart from wireless phone service we'll have cut down on our utility dependencies a little. My PDA is now a PocketPC Phone, which is like a Smartphone on steroids. I'm very happy with it. As of tomorrow, I'll have a Mac laptop for work. I have multiple blogs/domains: This one: http://inexorabletash.spaces.msn.com The old-school family site on a Unix box: http://www.calormen.com My map site:...

When Streets and Trips came out with a bundled GPS receiver I picked one up, ordered a CF Sled so I could use it with my antique Pocket PC and had a whirl. It was fun for a while but then we got a Prius with GPS in the dash, and S&T doesn't have maps of fun places like New Zealand so I haven't used it often. I do want to share one thing I learned when I was first trying it out and shared with co-workers who were having similar issues. ... Are you waiting long enough? I received enlightening information on another e-mail list that it can take up to 5 minutes to get a signal. Roughly, the GPS satellites radiate big data chunks on a less frequent basis and smaller, incremental data chunks more frequently. The GPS receiver must wait until it sees a big data chunk from several satellites before it can do anything. This is called “time to first fix” (TTFF), and can take 2-5 minutes even in completely optimal conditions. With my Dell Axim and the Pharos GPS receiver (using a C...