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I had thought this might be a good excuse to buy an upgrade to the newer generation Zune 80 or 120, but I’d have to find my place all over again in the current audiobook I’m listening to (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”).  Arrrrgh!

Search around on the net and you’ll find no shortage of complaints and Microsoft bashing surrounding this recent development.  It’s a sad day, and ironic one too.  I had just poked fun at a friend recently who bought an iPod without thinking of the alternative.  To be fair, however, had she bought a current model Zune, she’d be unaffected by the problem.

*UPDATE* Microsoft has released a statement regarding the Zune 30 bug that hit all of us this morning. They’re essentially telling everyone to wait until tomorrow morning to turn on the Zune.  As of 7:00am for Eastern timezone folks, your Zune will magically begin working again; almost ass mysteriously as it stopped.

Though it’s not in their official release, the problem is most likely due to a bug in its ability to handle a leap year, which 2008 qualified.  The idea being that a leap year has around 366 days instead of the usualy 365.  As of January 1st, Greenwich Meantime, the device will be back on 1 of 365 – and working.  It’s a logical solution, but a very unfortunate goof for the Zune hardware team.  Maybe we’ll get a coupon toward the purchase of a new generation Zune in the mail for our trouble (ahem…are you listening, Zune team)!

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I’m doing my best to ensure that I don’t lose sight of the treasures still to come in our first-born while our attention is diverted to this little girl. It can be a struggle keeping up with everything at home while still making time for me and Balthazar to play the games we used to play. Easing that, he’s recently really gotten into board games. I can keep an eye (and ear) on Sorscha while we play board games without being too distracted to give him my attention. It’s also easier to allocate this time, as our outside time has been cut short for the coming winter.

This experience of having our second child – some 5 years apart from our first – has given us new wisdom that I feel one can only gain through life.

One cannot fully appreciate what happens to the being at the birth of your first child. You undergo a transformation unlike anything before or after that moment. I remember seeing a baby born vaginally when I was an adolescent, and the experience gave me some spine-tingling chills that hinted at this fact. When we had our first child, the internal shift from my awareness of self: man, husband, child, protector, supplier, etc., went spiraling around and may have momentarily just been forgotten. It didn’t matter anymore. The thing I remember most – and perhaps something that sums up a great deal of this feeling – is that I lost my sense of invulnerability. Perhaps it’s passed on to the next generation – much to a parent’s chagrin.

Now at the birth of our second child, we see the real development of our first. Less of the initial surge of fatherhood that fills you, though a new awareness of everything that can’t be ignored.

I really mean to say that there are some lessons in life that we’re taught, but can never be appreciated until experienced. You were told that you’d one day look back at your school days and realize you were having the time of your life. You’re told that a child will change you. I’ve heard that time flies as you get older. “One day you’ll understand…” All of these things go unheeded as our elders press them into our heads. Being at the crossroads of naivety and understanding, I want to impart a sort of enlightenment to those behind me on the path. But who am I kidding? I’m just saying the same thing…

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I maintained a “Help” page on my personal blog for a long while. It was a practice in earnest to fight the good fight. I tested browser compatibility and noted errors with specific browsers. It helped me…never my audience. I think I gave up after reading “Don’t Make Me Think.” Ultimately, that is really the mindset and the answer. If I have to provide a help page, perhaps I’m doing something wrong. Perhaps I’m not making that personal connection with people because I’m ostracizing them through some personal elitism. I remember when DHTML was really cool and working with the DOM in unique, arcane methods was more a resemblance to the occult than anything Web 2.0 represents today. We’ve all grown up on this stuff. Internet adolescence is over and it’s time to get a real job; move out of your parent’s basement (no offense to you 30-somethings living in your parent’s basement). So I don’t have a “Help” page anymore. I try to offer help in more constructive ways – ways that a “Help” page can only make excuses for. Besides – who actually takes the time to read a manual, let alone my blog manual?

In many ways, the Internet is like a beloved child which the world is rearing. Sometimes carefully, sometimes irresponsibly. This child of ours is also, at times, a bit unruly. I could dig that further into boredom, but I think you can continue the similes on your own. At any rate, it’s an apt comparison when speaking of the web development practices used on the Internet over time. I used to be one of those elitist programmers that sought out the most obscure uses of the DOM or unknown HTML tags. Hell, I used to only use VBScript, and throw out angry comparisons of my pure VBScript solution to a JavaScript one. I’ve also visited sites where you are completely stumped as to how to use it. You have to mouse over a bunch of slick graphics in order to find out where they go. So you can understand my conclusion that the Internet’s adolescence has come and gone. We all had fun, now it’s time to get serious about [Internet] life and create things that matter. Things that provide value. Things that don’t make other people feel stupid.

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I originally got into blogging because it was a spreading phenomenon that involved technologies I knew and loved. As secondary incentives; I have always enjoyed writing, it’s a great creative outlet for web development and design, and blogging may very well give my descendants a familial history that will not otherwise be recorded in any books. A personal Wikipedia, if you will.

So here I am, more than three years later, assessing my blogging passions.

Of particular importance is my interest in a legacy. I am passionate about telling my story. Above all else, I trust that my musings will pass along a message that I cannot reach into my own ancestry for. That message will be a referential perspective to those in need of familial comfort. If we are to know the answer to life, the universe, and everything, we are to know our history.

It won’t be elegant nor abundantly enlightening, but the importance of having these recorded scraps of memory will one day prove to be some of the most cherished objects of a future generation. My own son will grow up in a revolutionary time when his every move is captured in startling fidelity – he will undoubtedly take for granted the provisions I aim to establish. But in his times of personal discovery, he will be able to look back on his own thoughts in perfect clarity; as well as those of his father. Perhaps he will see it. Perhaps it will be his children, or his children’s children…the estate of the future is a collection of intellectual capital, and there can be no greater treasure than knowledge.

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A reader in Taiwan, Danny Bee, left a comment on an article I wrote (“Emily Yoffe Learns The Secret“). I had first assumed that the comment was spam, though the suspect spam did not follow my preconceived notions of spam. It had no sales pitch, no links, and no inappropriate words. However, it didn’t exactly fit the article on which it was submitted:

Yoffe captures my concerns about the modern inception of philosophical teachings. Not by coming out and saying it, but by a simple inference from her experiences. I’ll remind my readers that I’m not bashing these teachings, only the glossy cover and Cliff’s Notes by which so many establish their adoption.

…and Mr. Bee’s response:

Polar cities in the far distant future to house remnants of humankind
who survive the apocalypse of devastating global warming? The casual
reader might think I am an alarmist or a mere scare-monger, but I am
neither. I am a visionary.

So like a good blogger, I engaged Danny in some email communications (to verify he was a real person) and tossed out the idea that I write something up on my opinion of his comment. I did check into Polar Cities a bit. Wikipedia has a very brief explanation of them.

Polar cities are proposed sustainable polar retreats designed to house human beings in the future, in the event that global warming causes the central and middle regions of the Earth to become uninhabitable for a long period of time. Although they have not been built yet, some futurists have been giving considerable thought to the concepts involved.

High-population-density cities, to be built near the Arctic Rim with sustainable energy and transportation infrastructure, will require substantial nearby agriculture. Boreal soils are largely poor in key nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus, but nitrogen-fixing plants (such as thevarious alders) with the proper symbiotic microbes and mycorrhizal fungi can likely remedy such poverty without the need for petroleum-derived fertilizers. Regional probiotic soil improvement should perhaps rank high on any polar cities priority list. James Lovelock’s notion of a widely distributed almanac of science knowledge and post-industrial survival skills also appears to have value.

As Danny says it, he’s not an alarmist nor a scare-monger, just a visionary. He didn’t rule out cuckoo, though to be fair, zealous may be more apt.

The idea of Polar Cities is in response to doomsday concepts from global warming. Should the ecosystem collapse as a result of a massive build-up of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, then this idea has only rhetorical value. As for the development and planning of Polar Cities for this foreseen eventuality, I think it either a bad plan or at least very pessimistic.

The estimated surface area of our polar land masses seems pretty high – almost 30 million km². Our population is over 6.7 billion at the moment. If you do the math on just those numbers, you get population density of around 224 persons/km². But I think that argument is far too simple. If we assume that 3/4 of the earth’s population dies due to the volatility of the environment, you’re left with 1.675 billion people looking for ocean-front property. I was also being nice by saying that we had nearly 30 million square kilometers of land mass between our two polar regions. If you look at what happens after the ice sheets melt, land rises from a release in pressure, and volcanoes blow, you’re looking at a lot less inhabitable land after all. I’ll cut it in half to 15 million km² because I’m skeptical about our building too close to volcanoes, fault lines, and other natural disasters. I also have to account for the plethora of lake and rivers that would undoubtedly remain on Antarctica – not to mention its steep mountain sides and craggy peaks. Now you’re looking at a population density of around 112 persons per square kilometer. That’s actually not that bad. There are far worse places in the world as far as population density goes.

Now that we have a workable number of people, we can start analyzing what this new homestead would be like.

I imagine a world metropolis at each pole (technically, the Arctic surrounds the pole). All nations and all diversity of people have centralized in two locations of the planet. The central lands of Earth have become desolate and hostile. You can venture out onto them, but survivability is contingent upon resources and exposure. The populations live in high-rise hotels methodically placed in a grid over the available land masses. The fringe area of decent land would be more barren of people than the central, cooler parts. Unfortunately, most people would need to be in Antarctica because of its concentration of land at the pole. Each hotel would be surrounded by land necessary to grow food and raise livestock. Everyone in the square kilometer living unit would be required to do their share of work to earn their food and living quarters. I’m not entirely sure how waste would be dealt with – perhaps pumping it into magma faults would suffice, but it may also be problematic in maintaining such a system. A refinery would probably take up too much valuable land area.

There would certainly be a militant government in place at both polar regions. I doubt anything more than a form of Feudalism would be adopted. With so many different people from different backgrounds, humans would probably resort to brute strength. With anarchy-like crime abound and tough living conditions, citizens would surely profess an allegiance to a “king” for support.

A glimpse into what living in Polar Cities might be like seems more like a good idea for a Science Fiction novel than any reality we should plan for. I can almost see an adaptation of “Firefly” applying to Earth’s new living conditions. While interesting to contemplate, I think time is better spent learning what exactly is happening to the environment, and reducing our adverse impact to it. Then again, if the environmental changes are a natural evolution in planetary cycle, then we humans are going to go through some hard times. I don’t think Darwin’s theory of natural selection comes without its pain. A species must suffer untold losses to survive with its fittest.

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The bright side is that there are schools out there that cater to exactly this kind of thinking. In fact, even in my [nearly] local district changes have been implemented to allow for various focuses to receive extra attention and guidance. There are a host of specialized school systems such as the Progressive systems; Magnet, Montessori, or the diverse array of private schools. While not available to everyone, they at least stand as practical examples of the application of non-standard or non-traditional educational means.

TED.com: “Do schools kill creativity?”

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At once I will congratulate the creators on a job well done, an exceptional use of YouTube and media marketing, and an interesting “first date” story for the kids.

The story was a relatively simple one with a very “indie-feel”development. There was nothing too unexpected, though the touch of reality certainly holds to a current, popular interest. To that, knowing the whole story on how and why this film was created gives the audience a greater appreciation for the work as a whole. Having this uncommon insight in a film makes the story a great deal more interesting. The real story here is something more than what a trailer can summarize.

Four Eyed Monsters is a respectable résumé for its creators, Arin Crumley and Susin Buice. While a surface examination of the plot will demonstrate nothing unimaginably different, the 10,000 foot view shows us who Arin and Susan are. It develops a curious interest – celebrity – in the directors and stars of the film. It establishes a certain fondness and caring within its audience; we want to keep watching them and we want them to be well.

The first thing that struck me about the film was its descriptive use of cinematography. Each theme, though often unspoken, was presented in well-delivered visual allegory. I was reminded of “Hero” and the distinct use of color to deliver separate story lines throughout the film. As a résumé piece, this film generates a rich example of Crumley and Buice’s creative and technical work.

By the end of the film, I was in great appreciation for the presentation as a whole. The “rawness” of what the audience is allowed to see is fantastic. A tight sense of inclusion is with you throughout the story; as though you may know Arin and Susan. Maybe they just live in the area and you see them time-to-time. From introduction to closing comments, the audience is brought into the success or failures of the directors. Venues such as this allow for a progressive conversation from the community on all aspects of comments and the work itself. A Film 2.0, to be sure.

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HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
I HAS A VAR
IM IN YR LOOP

UP VAR!!1
VISIBLE VAR
IZ VAR BIGGER THAN 10? KTHXBYE

IM OUTTA YR LOOP
KTHXBYE

It is questionable to this writer whether lolcode is a greater method of subterfuge-coding than Whitespace. Whichever one integrates with Microsoft Office as a macro option first will probably take the crown. Code on.

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