Reverse Engineering the Future
First day in two weeks I’ve felt halfway decent. My sleep was restful, the little headache pulses are gone, and I even had the initiative to get back to walking today. (Only 2/3 of a mile, because it got cold out, and I didn’t bring a jacket this morning.)
Tonight I will be catching up on housework and bills, and of course giving my Mom a call to see how she’s doing.
Was thinking more about the high-tech Captain Nemo today. If you dropped today’s MacBook Pro in his workroom, I suspect that he’d figure out how to turn it on, and even use some of the software if there wasn’t a login password. I expect he’d work out what the battery was, and might even be able to recharge it using the technology of his time. I’m sure he could work out the basic concept of the motherboard, and I’ll even grant that he could reverse-engineer the simpler peripheral protocols with enough brute force, time, and care.
I’m fairly confident, though, that the LCD screen, integrated circuits, memory, and hard disk would be completely beyond him. At his technology level, any of them would have to be ripped apart and destroyed to achieve even a basic understanding of the principles involved. A magnetic storage medium might be within his imagination, but the ability to build another one just wouldn’t exist yet.
(A few of the TNG and DS9 episodes annoyed me in this fashion, showing the heroes taking apart communicators and tricorders with utterly primitive tools. I’m convinced that one couldn’t even crack the cases with less than highly specialized tools, and if one did, the contents would be largely integrated into a few non-user-serviceable bits. But that’s just me.)
Perhaps Nemo could accomplish much with “black box” parts delivered by a mysterious supplier, much as the scientist-heroes of This Island Earth did. But could our justly-paranoid sea captain trust the source?
130 Leagues Over the Asphalt
T – I – R – E – D.
Went back to Roanoke on Saturday. My mom’s doing great: she can move both her leg and arm now, and on Sunday took a few steps (with a great deal of support). I’m told this is still Gold Medal performance, and my optimism was repeatedly fed this weekend. nanoreid was there for a bit, and I got to say hi to Ginny and Ian as well. Starr bought my mother a knitting loom which can be fastened to a solid surface, and now my mom can indulge her addiction one-handed for the duration!
Roanoke felt a little odd, there are buildings and shops which weren’t there last time I passed through – a bit like hearing an old song on the radio and finding an entirely new chorus after the second stanza. I took a hotel room there Saturday night to save us the drive to and from shrewlet‘s offered crash space in Blacksburg, but while the room was huge, the bed was hard as a plank, and we slept poorly for folks who would be driving 204 miles home. Route 460 was a beautiful, tranquil drive, though. I’m sold on that road for now.
Yesterday we woke too early, and headed over to spend lunch with Starr’s mom, then the afternoon at Amy’s with the gamer group. Her mom was going to gas grill the food, but after the gas loop rusted away at a touch, we went with good old charcoal, and lunch was yummy. I now know where Starr gets her habit of cooking a regiment’s food for a few people, and felt guilty leaving before I could consume a second hamburger.
While the afternoon was sold as a combination grilling / gaming event, I’m not sure anyone was really into the gaming, and after a few hours of excellent chatting and cattching up, we left to get me some badly needed quiet time. I developed yesterday something that feels much like my old migraine headaches, something which comes in short, searing pulses then goes away for a half-hour or so. (One of the first things Starr did when hearing about that was to check me for stroke indicators – of which I seem to have none.)
In geek news, the Mars Phoenix robot probe has a Twitter account. Andy Ihnatko referred to the account as cosplay for rocket scientists, but I’m enjoying keeping up with what the probe’s doing (or at least what it was doing 15 minutes ago – speed-of-light lag, y’know). Some quick Googling finds images taken by the Mars Recon Orbiter of Phoenix on the way down (Phoenix Down?) which means that we Earthlings not only managed to hit a target scores of millions of miles away, we got a picture of it from another camera that had previously done so under our instruction. [T]hese are the things that hydrogen atoms do when given 13.7 billion years. – Carl Sagan
So, yeah. Probably another early bedtime tonight, which is a shame because I wanted to get some WoW levelling in. With luck, the rest of the week will go a little easier on me!
Drama Burger, may I take your order?
I’m back home from Roanoke. (Salem, if you’re being picky.)
As I mentioned in the locked post, Mom’s in the hospital after suffering a stroke. She’s lost motor function in her right limbs, but still has full sensation, vision, and her normal faculties.
Sunday night Starr and I discussed the situation, and I decided to head up Monday morning. Mom was surprised and very touched to see me, and I got to see her moving her limbs ever so slightly – perhaps a centimeter or two – which, only days after a stroke, is a major accomplishment. I’m hoping for her sake that this is the beginning of a swift recovery. She’ll be starting physical therapy next week.
On top of that, Starr’s PT Cruiser is in the shop, and we just got Midori-kitty back from surgery. If exhaustion counts as exercise, then I’m completely caught up.
Much thanks to everyone who offered assistance and good wishes. It means quite a lot.
Lunch and a walk
Finished my 10th mile of the new mile-a-workday program. At this rate, I should reach Rivendell by Christmas 🙂 Yesterday and today were beautiful walking days – 70 degrees, light breeze, cloudless skies. I notice that I’m slightly less overheated and winded than I was two weeks ago, though much progress remains to be made.
With the removal of two 200-calorie Cokes from my day, and a 200-calorie walk in addition, I’m hoping I see even a tiny bit of body difference in a month or two. I mean, I figure my diet beforehand was in the 2,200 – 2,400 calorie per day range, so that’s a fairly big cut.
After around 20-years, I have reconnected with cynical_prophet. He and I used to be thick as thieves in the Pathfinder days, but we had a falling out. That water’s long passed under that bridge, and I found him through clicking random LJ links – it’s good to hear from him again. Hard to write a short letter about “here’s what I’ve been up to for the last two decades”, though.
Brief updates
- 10:08 Diet Coke may be the single most effective method yet devised of weaning me from caffeine. #
Sent subspace radio by LoudTwitter
Another crushing Invid defeat
Last night I had my first taste of lobster in decades. I’d been putting a lot of energy into taking care of Starr lately, with her overwork issues and such; she decided it was my turn, and set up a lovely lobster and shrimp dinner for me.
Those things are hard to stare down – I’ve always been a bit wary of food that’s looking back at me. Luckily, lobsters look evil enough that I can tell myself that it would gladly eat me if our roles were reversed, and start dismembering the thing. (Cows are the same way. Don’t trust ’em, that’s all I’ll tell you.)
Very tasty; in fact, it tasted better with lemon juice than melted butter, to my surprise. I think that crab legs are still the shellfish win for me, but this is not a complaint I’m registering. I greatly appreciated the effort and expense!
Saturday was fun, but hectic and busy. A local crafter’s group pow-wow led into an unsuccesful Korean food run which preceeded a graduation party which turned into an unexpected late night hot-tubbing which became an overnight stay which included brunch the next morning with our host’s parents. I may not have gotten my explicit mileage in, but given the amount of time I spent on my feet, I’m calling it an exercise win.
Sunday mostly involved the couch, the kitten, and a lot of Discovery Network.
Firepower
Of course, the main reason that a Star Destroyer can blow the Enterprise to smithereens in a heartbeat is that while Trek pays lip service to power consumption realities, Star Wars doesn’t even bother. It’s fairly dubious that, with the given technology, a Next Gen shuttlepod could even manage orbital velocity (which they are seen to do several times in the series), but a similar-sized Star Wars vehicle is a hyperspace-capable deflector-shield-equipped combat craft. And the colossal power requirements of the Death Star are barely worth mentioning here.
Now, the high-tech of the Lucas universe is thousands of years older than that of Roddenberry’s, so perhaps that’s part of the explanation. But that just underscores the fact that we’re comparing apples and oranges; the USS Dallas and Captain Nemo’s Nautilus are both submarines, but I fear that our brilliant inventor is in for a tough time against computer-aided passive sonar and homing torpedoes.
Here be your over-analyzed geek argument of the day.
Feets don’t fail me now!
Hey there! I need opinions from the wise folk of LiveJournal.
So, I’m getting about a mile of walking in per day, but after a week, I’m still a bit winded and overheated when I finish.
