Cloud control

 Annalee Newitz for Gizmodo on the future of google.

I'm slowly reading Terms of Service, by Jacob Silverman.  Slow because I'm reading on the light rail 30-40 minutes a day, and because there's a lot of information packed into each page.

I've been waiting to read more science fiction that tackles the kind of issues raised in these books/articles.  Mostly there's a lot of vague handwaving towards a totalitarian scenario, or it's a metaphor for oppression.  Detailed tech-savvy analysis of where the social media, data as the monetizing factor, no privacy scenario is headed, not so much.

Guess I'm gonna have to write something this summer...

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Interesting developments afoot

PC makers sidling away from Microsoft, incorporating Android apps, etc., makes for  interesting speculation about the near future for the older pieces in the wide array of gadgets now becoming must-haves.  Shaking things up would be nice.  I had to ditch Vista for Linux because it simply would not work on my machine, which is still purring on Ubuntu.  No love lost for Microsoft's monopoly game here.

This just reads like a shelf of 80s SF novels...

That's a Mpls St Paul airport Delta gate, apparently in a futuristic Bond wannabe phase.

Anatomy lessons

After recovering from food poisoning, I scheduled an appointment with an ART (Active Release Technique) practitioner.  It's weird and painful, moving and pushing range of motion through activated pressure points, but it felt good at the same time.  Since then, I've been sore but feeling like the muscles are less tight.

The appointment was interesting, because I got to feel exactly where each muscle was and how they work together.  Instead of the piriformis, which was not happy, it seems I strained the hamstring right where they connect up to the trunk.  And connected back muscles, causing sciatica.  A big mess, basically.

Waiting to see if the soreness subsides.  However, this is the first week I've been off ibuprofen and not icing as much.  Running in the water at Lake Nokomis has felt good at the time and after.  So there's finally a little light in the tunnel... 

If the lake didn't freeze over by November, I'd just stick to water running... But the winter thing has not completely abated.  We just get no x-country skiing snow...  Making cross training that much more difficult.  Gonna have to hope rehab is not too heinous.

Clarion West Write-a-thon: Back on Track

So, yeah, I got derailed in the second week of the Write-a-thon by PAIN.  And spent a lot of time icing and stretching and researching and going to medical appointments and making up work hours to cover that.  And now my leg is becoming functional and the piriformis is considering becoming less angry.  Work is still a bear.

I was getting reorganized.  Then I got food poisoning, yay.  At least it's all given me a lot of time to consider my projects, as well as the fragility of the body and mortality and bunk like that...

I will do six weeks of the original goals from next week on.  June and early July are not my most productive period anyway.  I know, I know... Excuses, excuses...

I did get a chance to focus on research that is much needed, and to rethink the big story problems I've been wrangling with in the novel project.  Weak as an excuse for not writing, but nonetheless needed work.

So, write on...  Redux.

Jailbreaking

Today, after a long day of running a 5k, wandering Loring Park looking at cute dogs while waiting for the parade to start, clapping and whistling, joining the MN AIDS Project briefly to say hi to a co-worker, winding through Loring again, walking back down Hennepin to see the end of the parade, beers at Brits pub with a school board contingent and watching desultory lawn bowling, then walking dogs...  my very nice GF linuxed my box for me.

Yes, you read that right, the laptop I have been avoiding using for almost nine months after too many episodes of Vista fail is now a defector.  I can be very slow to make  decisions, and a new job put me off starting any complicated new projects for most of that time, but I finally bit the bullet. 

The combination of Cory Doctorow explaining how well Ubuntu works for him, a book finally being in the library when I was cruising the IT shelves, and the GF partitioning her old XP desktop with much success broke through my inertia.

Plus the Clarion West Write-a-thon made me realize it was probably time to get back on the horse.  I've been writing in longhand and on my Android, but taking a break from finishing and submitting, while trying to get up to speed in the day job.  No more excuses...