In days to come, when the world’s moved on, will older men – wise and bowed with years – move their hunching fingertips and gesture clumsily to their young? “An honest day’s typing for an honest day’s wage – you young folk don’t know you’re born…. We had none of this thought-control in the old days….”
For several years now, the ‘holodeck’ – a place where ‘force-fields’ and holograms are co-generated to create real-as-life environments – has been a staple of Star Trek storylines. The applications of such a creation – which in theory provides a totally flexible environment – have never really been fully explored. Certain tremendously interesting ideas have been presented – such as using a solid holographic form as the host for an artificial intelligence – but others have been left woefully unexplored – such as entirely solidly holographic (and hence totally flexible and adaptable) space-faring ships. One of the applications that has been explored – albeit in a very slight fashion – is the idea of the holographic interface. While most sci-fi shows have present holographic displays, Star Trek has (once) presented apparently solid interfaces, meshed with pre-existent computers, which were completely adaptable and changed according to the circumstances. What is my point? That one of the first completely light-based interfaces now exists – a projected keyboard that senses how you are using it. The future could be almost completely non-physical interfaces. How exciting is that?
I never realised producing a flow-chart could be so satisfying. I’ve spent much of the last couple of hours producing my first Visio flowchart and there’s something tremendously rewarding about the process. Turning complexity into simple choices, finding a logical sense of development – taking a mess of stuff from all around you and assembling something clear out of it – something with process – something manageable.
Breaking news: someone none of you know has had a haircut. And doesn’t it look nice?!
Paul’s back. I think. Which reminds me… How many bloggers can you see?
My mother rang up this morning – she’d seen a job for a Web Producer advertised in the Eastern Daily Press – Norfolk’s county newspaper (unlike the Evening News which is for dodgy left-wing city-types). The job paid badly and would have involved working at the BBC in Norwich. I couldn’t imagine anything worse.
The last few weeks – before getting this short stint at the BBC – I’ve been seriously considering leaving London. There’s very little here that really excites me, there’s little that would keep me here… Even now I’m unsure that I’ve got the patience and tolerance to deal with its griminess and greyness. But Norfolk… Perhaps that’s too scary even for me…
What the world needs is a Google of porn. Something that unbelievably simple… Pornfinder.
In about eight hours I start a three month contract with the BBC doing something extremely interesting that I don’t really want to go into detail about in a public place at the moment and which almost none of you will ever get to see anyway… I’m scared – to be honest. I know I can do it, but I don’t know if I will do it. Which is why I’m awake at 1am in the morning. Thinking.
I haven’t started a fucking meme in ages. It’s time for embarrasing online web confessions. Today I will confess to being the man who first created the alt.fan.noah-wyle newsgroup. I rule.
As we wander around the internet, and grab and download files to play with, our computers fill with the assorted detritus of a thousand tiny urges. While cleaning my computer I found a folder called ‘unfiled’ which contained images that I thought I might use two, three and even four years ago. Just odds and ends. Things that were funny, interesting or beautiful.
I’d love to put them all online for you to see, but perhaps they’ll make more sense as a collage – a scrapbook – a kind of stream-of-consciousness insight into bits of my head over the last couple of years…
