FORMAT WARS

Back again, with a post containing a more technological bent, like hardcore technology, unless I get carried away and sappy again. The best recent example I can see is the recent fight for the title of Industry/Consumer Standard High Definition Player. (if you can really call it a fight, considering how long it lasted.) In one corner we had the"high definition" player supported by some manufacturers, and in the other corner we have the "blue-ray" high def player. In a unanimous vote, a knockout was scored by blue ray (the name even sounds cool; blue ray laser light, ....red laser sounds so cd and yesterday. I've even invested in a blue ray movie "Cars" and I don't even have a blue ray player in the house. Oh well, I'm not always an early adopter (more later) and with 1. a player at work by my desk to use 2. and a family blessed with kids, I'm not quite always cutting edge anymore, but I wouldn't trade what I have for anything, "people before possessions. But just the blue case and logos are almost worth 19.95 or 24.95 or whatever it was, is that sick? Am I addicted? Or just equipped to perform my job in technology? Any, this reminds me of a good, old example of a format war fought long, long, ago, in the 1970's to be exact. Sony (no commercial reimbursement, yet) which I have yet to be disappointed with a purchase from this company, like they say, "If you buy quality, you only cry once". Anyway, other good companies, too. Like I was saying, Sony had the Betamax videotape recorder, others had introduced the VHS system. Better quality does not alway win out, neither does Sony, and by all accounts the Betamax was a superior video quality system over the VHS system, but not by much. The VHS system was a good quality system, as is evidenced by it's reign as the video recording system of choice (1) for around 20 years. Betamax was relegated into semi- obscurity, tapes and player available for awhile for a few holdouts, but mostly occupying closet space with the laser disc player (had to turn over mid-movie). A large factor was VHS beating Beta to the longer length for movie(s) recording. Now dvd players are 29.95. Back to the main topic, Blue ray players were originally $1000 or more, now they have broken under the 300 dollar mark. Time marches on. The original NTSC video system that vcr's were based on, often knocked, was a marvel for it's original time of invention, and has served us well up til now, and until, officially, February when time stands still and broadcast tv goes digital. Speaking of vhs tapes, I writing this during the noon hour, and by noon I had already managed to drop a balky videotape on the floor and broke the plastic front. ( she also had it in dvd). Just helping to move her down the road a little bit, technologically speaking.

What's a man to do? To text or not to text......

I came from the camp where a cell phone is used for making cell phone "CALLS", get it?, as in cell PHONE, not cell TEXT. I have happily ( as happily as one can be with paying upwards of 1.25 hundred dollars per month to have their family covered, including their fourteen year old daughter, and what in the world, thought I, is a thirteen (last year) year old girl needing a cell phone for? Well, I gave in, and with what I thought to be good reason, the listings of which are fodder for a nudder posting. Anyway, this cell phone nervana lasted approximately ten years until being shattered by two occurences, not necessarily occuring at the same time. Firstly, my wife and daughter are into texting, and relish in and nearly make it necessary if I want to communicate with them and get any good out of my cell phone, I mean my cell text. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em! Secondly, I am on this quest, as mentioned before, and surely will be mentioned later, to keep from becoming an "old dog", in life a healthy, worthy goal; and in my job (tell ya later) a real necessity. Give up my watch? No! (see earlier post). Start texting? Yes, with some trepidation. Very slowly, in fact painlfully slowly, at first, and several time after probably five to ten minutes of working, I accidently hit a wrong key and poof! my work is gone. Lesson to be learned---- save to draft. Old computer saying...save early and save often. Does this have application in other parts of life...hmmm....I feel another possible post coming on. So my speed is coming up slowly, and maybe I'll consider a phone at contract renewal time with better texting capabilities. Honestly, I have seen the light somewhat, you can wait and look at a message at your leisure or on your own time. This was proven to me when I was in Salt Lake City (previous post) and was in a seminar, and my lovely wife was in church, and we could still communicate by text and relay information. Try to do that with a voice call. Maybe it's not just class clowns doinking around in a school room that makes up texting. Hope for texting and hope for me to shatter another barrier in my struggle to be a new dog (is there such a thing?) I guess so, maybe a pup, but I doubt they would have much luck with using a cell phone for voice calls, much lest texting. I had 5 postings, which just barely qualified me to be sent to gazillions of search engines (an interesting term, especially the engine part), now I have 6 and am safely over the limit necessary, and surely by tomorrow My blog will be seven days old, and have over 5 postings, evidently a sign of maturity on the web. Are things ie. time actually speeding up? Alvin Toffler (him again) thinks so, and felt strongly enough to write a particular book that changed my life profusely ( not really that strong, but it was a good chance to use the word profusely, how often do I get to do that!? Digression sneaks in again, post done, not really very painful after, actually somewhat enjoyable, as I had this one in my head for quite some time, just needed to spit it out. Write you on number seven.

It's A Different World

We often carelessly kick around the fact that life today has changed a lot, like since the '50's, as far back as this comment is going to (or I care to) go. Ponderance in general can be good, but I think a more concrete pinning with specific examples better serves to illustrate our point today. What kind specific examples might I be talking with reference to, you the reader of this specific post might query me? To show you, let's hop into the Time Cruiser, an admittedly non-scientific and very probably un-buildable "Gee Whiz" doodad that can exist and be used in my blog (have you never heard of films and the term "suspended disbelief?) So please, play along. We are now in it (the Time Cruiser) and of course, cruising along. There are some things that might become apparent to us. Can you believe that children growing up today have never known (depending on their age) a world without the internet? Or color tv? Or tv in general (now that even includes me)? No cell phones to keep you in constant contact. Cable or Dish tv? (I know, rub your two fingers together and tell me it's the world's smallest violin that's playing) but I remember growing up with only two tv stations availalable, NBC and ABC (they had to ask for donations to build a "repeater" to even get ABC to us, so I missed out on all those hits from CBS...Ed Sullivan, Carol Burnett, Captain Kangaroo, etc. The only time I was blessed with viewing them was when we visited my grandma Egger in Lincoln, Ne. which seemed like a metropolis. Problem was, her tv set ((remember only one tv in the house, which, gasp, had no remote? Of course, with only 3 or 4 channels to pick from, how big a deal was it to remove yourself from the Lazy Boy (still no commercial reimbursement) and switch channels?)) was in her bedroom. No big deal you say. Well it wouldn't be except for the fact that me and my brother were found to be allergic to cats, and that's where the old tomboy or tomgirl cat would relax, right on the bedspread where we layed to watch good 'ole CBS. We wondered why we always got choked up, and red and teary eyed, and wheezy when we went to grandma's house (we liked her, but she didn't affect us that much) until we realized it went away when we went outside her house, and finally figured out it was the cat. Only one phone in the house? Which was corded and not portable. Really no way to listen to mobile music on foot ( I can't think of any). No video recording of tv for later viewing? No movie rental or sales? I was so infatuated with the movie "American Graffiti" having watched it literally tens of times in the theatre wherever I could find it showing, usually alone, as my friends long since quit going with me after the second or third time, and even considered buying a 16 millimeter film copy of it so I could finally watch it to my hear's content at home, a rather expensive proposition. My fantasies included buying a theatre and showing nothing but American Graffiti all day and night long and not really caring who came, just so I could sit and watch it. Think if someone had told us a while ago that we would be willingly paying for drinking water in a bottle? Are you nuts? Or, paying for our tv signal. Or, willing paying to hook our computer (those who had them) up to a network? Or, that this network (Internet) would literally replace writing letters (now sneeringly referred to as "snail mail". Remember, how hard they tried to get us to buy computers, gee, we could put our kitchen recipes on them, instead of the little recipe box, which had worked fine for may years, yeah right. And then get flour and other cooking ingredients on and in the keyboard, when we could just wipe of the recipe box and be good to go again. Not until this thing called e-mail did all generations, including the senior ones, see and feel the need to get a computer or feel isolated. Well, the gauge is showing I'm getting low on whatever fuel this Time Cruiser runs on (I don't know everything about technology, I just get in and cruise) so lets come back to the current world and end our journey for now, and just try the best we can to figure out and enjoy the new toys that really do help us in the current world,(I wouldn't trade today and all the neat stuff for anytime before in history). Technology Tidbit for today: Talk about how time is compressing (Remember Alvin Toffler?) It is said that if a halfway point were drawn in the history of all inventions since the start of time, it would be around 1900. That means we have created as many inventions since 1900 to now, as we did in all of history before 1900. Tell me that's not cool, awesome, interesting, scary, unbelievable, ho hum, pick your word depending on your individual technological bent. Gotta go fill up the cruiser ....next time.

Back Home Again (But not in Indiana)

Greetings from Salt Lake City International Airport! This is what I had hoped to start my ill fated entry with yesterday. In reality, It's "Greetings from my home's basement!" Due to my misunderstanding of available Wi Fi in the airport, need (want) of/for food, and other extenuating ($.25 word) (do they have a "cents sign" key on the computer keyboard?) circumstances, I was not able to post yesterday. You know, I realize the need for the new heightened security measures at airports, and I'm on board with this, but it's still quite an ordeal. When you travel, the real "trip" is getting through security screening, it's all easy after that compared to the security thing. I tried to be a conscientious, aware, and prepared traveller. I printed literally several hundred pages of travel/security info from the web, and actually read most of it. No where did I see anything about having your laptop out and ready for inspection. So, I had mine in a bigger bag, with various items on top of it, including a donut, medications, and camera. I was already running late, and had to empty part of my bag on the floor in the middle of a very long security line. I did make it through, putting things back together the best I could as they were already boarding my flight for Denver, enroute to Salt Lake City. I did make the flight, successfully arriving in Denver from Omaha. Ok, I know about the huge amount of thrust generated by the airplane's jet engines, I am aware of how, due to a low pressure area being created above the wings, therefore the plane is able to lift (and fly), and I have heard more than once that mile for mile it's safer to fly than to drive your car. But, realizing all that, my common sense mind tells me there is no way that huge thing weighing who knows what itself, and all the passengers (roughly 100 (seats/passengers) x their weight individually, and lots of luggage, even so good that Frontier (no commercial payment) has the Air Bus brand of airplane ( a French company, but don't get me started on economic ramifications and the effect on our GNP, that's for another post) as the flagship of it's entire line, there is no way something like what I flew on can fly. Just no way. Science aside, it just can't be. But it is "be" millions of times per year. However, in favor of my common sense, If you are driving your car and it has trouble and quits, well you at least just roll to a stop. In the airplane....not so simple. Thankfully, that occurence on airplanes is very rare, rare enough in fact, to account for the large number of passengers flown each year. Since I disregard my common sense on enough other occasions, the scientist/engineer wannabe in me wins out and I will still fly. Besides, you still get that complementary soft drink, no peanuts though, on most flights! Enough of my travel tales, maybe more later, here is the Technology Tidbit for today: The Air Force has used artificial intellengece voices (pre-programmed computer voices) to talk to the pilots on some training flights (why , I don't know, and it's not really relevant for this story) They have found out that the pilots respond quicker and execute the commands faster when given by a female voice. With respect to the scientific explanation for this, I will be glad to discuss/debate this with you. With regards to implications in real life, I'm not even going there. Sorry for the longer rambles, maybe I'm just debriefing myself from the trip. Another post bites the dust.

Digital Natives

Heard recently in a seminar: A teacher decided to conduct a poll in her classes regarding how many of her college students (six classes in one day polled, probably not a completely scientific poll, but still food for thought) were wearing watches that day. The answer: none. I heard this first-hand from the teacher herself. How old does that make me feel? Some of my areas may not change. I don't believe watch-wearing is too "old dog" yet.

Techometer

What's up? Second Life (even in education)
What's down? The economy (not really my arena)

SALT LAKE CITY TRIP (Business)

As you might have gathered from the caption under the picture on the left, I'm in Salt Lake City for the CIT (Conference on Information Technology). Have some new things I hope to share (technologically-wise) in the near future. Today's Technology Tidbit: tube tv's are out (duh), and plasma and lcd's are falling, at least in price, through the floor, as we speak. The digital tv conversion is coming in February. This is not a big thing where I live, as we don't get diddly (sp?) with an antenna, so "over the air" tv is not an option for most of us, along with the proliferation of cable and satellite tv, having a digital tuner is not that big of a thing. But if you buy new now, you will get one and be ready for whatever. Oh, to live in a more populous spot, and be closer than 75 miles to a television station, but that borders on the "life" portion of this blog, and since this is my first posting, let's stick with technology, it's safer. But often not as interesting or interactive. Speaking of interactivity, what ever happened to interactive tv? It was supposed to be the big thing in tv, but that was thought to be in the future in the sixties, and it's probably sharing a store room with eight track tape players, (don't laugh too hard, my brother had a FOUR TRACK cassette player in his '53 Chevy) that we used to ride to school in. Betcha you haven't even heard of those. If the eight tracks are a laugh, the four track's a hoot. Oh, but we do digress, but at least still within the boundaries of this blog. First shot done.