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blog, My musings

Promises Not Fulfilled

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The future has disappointed me in some pretty serious ways.  Back in the 1960’s and 1970’s, the future looked like it would be a pretty amazing place.  Beginning with Star Trek and the possibility of many marvelous things to come, even though it was set many centuries ahead, there were still some inventions that could be happening as we moved toward the 21st century.  Some of those are being realized now.

tricorder_670
Replica of the Star Trek tricorder, photo by Wired.com

Things like the tricorder, which has a rudimentary version being developed now for medical diagnosis.  In fact, a very small one called Scanadu is now being tested that can quickly measure heart rate, temperature, blood pressure, oxygen level and provides a complete ECG reading.  That is a promise that is coming into being earlier than expected.

Now the transporter, that wonderful piece of technology that completely baffles anyone who contemplates it for more than a few minutes, is still a long ways off and one has to wonder if there is any way to move a body by breaking it down to molecules and sending it to a receiving unit?  According to quantum physicists, it may be possible.  But, we are a long ways from the reality of even transporting non-living items more than a short distance.

Block portable phone.
Block portable phone.

Communicators seem to be the technology that made the leap first and our modern cell phones and tablets are proof of how well that is developing.  In fact, we may be way ahead of the curve on the Star Trek style communicator. We can instantly communicate around the planet from a device we can carry in our pockets.  We can see each other on our tablet screens –  hello, The Jetsons – as we talk in beautiful living color through high-quality mini-cameras in our phones and tablets.  Pretty amazing.  Was it less than 50 years ago that this seemed like a distant dream for the future?   I was carrying one of the block mobile phones in the 80’s for my job!

Knight-Rider-1982-Kitt-550x412
KITT from Knight Rider

Where are the failures?  KITT is a starter.  By now, we expected the car from Knight Rider, the fully capable of driving itself, talking to you and monitoring your well-being type vehicle.  It has taken a lot longer than one might have expected, but the self-driving car is slowly emerging.  Mercedes has a concept car in test mode.  I know that Nevada is one of the states that has allowed testing of a “driverless” car, but I haven’t seen one on the road yet.  Chevrolet has a gorgeous concept design for one.  Still, it’s 2015 and we don’t have this marvel available at a reasonable price yet.  We do have some innovations, but they are a long way from KITT.

Speaking of cars, why are we still using fossil fuels to power our vehicles and many other things?  One of Tesla’s battery plants is going into production near Reno and the automobile is available now for a really high asking price of $75,000.  I believe Harrison Ford is driving one, but most of us can’t afford to put one in the garage.  We have several hybrid cars, but nothing that is like the car we were hoping to see by now.

Where the heck is Mr. Fusion and the anti-gravity car?  Back to the Future gave us hope for flying cars, which are sort of being developed by independent inventors with mixed success.  Although I admit, the idea of people zipping around in the sky with the lack of attention they sometimes pay to driving is a frightening prospect.   Even in BTTF they still went in sky lanes, not any which direction they wanted to go.  We don’t even have an anti-gravity skateboard yet.  Folks, there has to be a way to do this!

One more thing missing from the promise suggested by several movies and TV shows are the household robots.  A Roomba is a great little vacuum, but it does not a robot make.  I want the one that cleans the whole house, does the dishes, cooks dinner and walks the dog!  Again, slow to develop, but there are also strides being made in that department.  Some “robots” are single-function, like the Roomba.  By the way, iRobot also makes mopping, scrubbing and pool cleaning robots. There are complicated task robots like the ones used to perform surgery with precision or the civil defense and military units, also from iRobot, that assist with dangerous situations.  Not surprising that defense robots would become commonplace before any domestic ones.

Are robotic soldiers on the way?  Certainly, they are being considered and drones are part of that robotic army.  No one wants to lose human lives in wars, but what is gained in the my-robots-are-better-than-your-robots fighting?  Surely the avoidance of war is the only real solution to problems and in this area comes one of the biggest failures of the future.  We are still battling it out, still trying to force thoughts, ideas, religion, or what other propaganda we believe down other people throats.  World leaders are still trying to push for more.  The US Congress is failing miserably at managing the country.  Social media has become a platform for anyone to espouse their views, right or wrong.

But these are heavy subjects for another blog. For now, let’s just say some key things of the future promise of the mid-20th century have failed to be realized as we are mid-second decade of the 21st century.  I wanted the promise of those science fiction shows that offered a glimpse of a better world for everyone and a Mr. Fusion providing unlimited power from garbage. Is that so much to ask?

So tell me, friends, how has the future disappointed you so far?

blog, My musings

Why did the chicken cross the road?

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Eulogy to Our Chicken

It’s an old joke with the obvious answer of “To get to the other side.”

But the past couple of days I’ve been asking myself a variation on that same question.  On Wednesday morning, my funny, sweet wild chicken decided, not for the first time, to leave the sanctuary of our yard to visit one of the neighbors.  Usually, she has gone to the empty house next door, which is relatively safe, but that morning, she went into the high fence enclosure of the other neighbor.  It was a fatal mistake for her.  That neighbor has two pit bulls, who have a doggie door to the yard.

When I came out around noon, I easily spotted her crumpled body through the chain link fence.  There was no blood and it looked like one of the dogs had quickly broken her neck.  They had no interest in eating her.  I never even heard a squawk out of her. Later, when my neighbor came home, she retrieved the body and I buried her the next morning in the garden that she had romped through for the past six months, a location where the morning sun touches her grave.

Cheeka in early December.
Cheeka in early December.

Cheeka was a wild hen.  She arrived in our yard late last September, a young bird, about two months old and we had no idea from whence she came.  She quickly joined the quail under the bushes in the back.  When they ran through the yard, she ran with them, a happy wild bird enjoying the day.  Of course, we fed the birds when food got scarce and we tried to figure out a way to catch Cheeka.  Our neighbor, the owner of the dogs, knew someone who would add her to their hen house, but they wanted us to catch her.  So much easier said than done.  She was no dumb bird!  She was a bit of a problem for us as our community regulations specifically say no poultry and our only defense was that she wasn’t ours.  She was a wild bird just like any of the other birds that were in the yard.

Over the next few months, I fed her daily, along with the other birds, and I gave her a name.  She grew into a beautiful hen with brown and rust-colored feathers with a hint of cream underneath.  She came running when she heard my voice.  I wouldn’t call her a pet, but she was a pleasant little animal who was perfectly happy in her life here, and I grew very fond of her.  When it snowed in December, she woke me with loud, almost frantic clucks and squawks from the firethorn bushes next to my window where she’d taken refuge and complained about the strange, and cold, white blanket that covered the ground.  We’d put a shelter in the yard for her, but would she use it?  Of course not.  She would barely go in enough to get the bits of food I put there to attempt to lure her inside.

As the sun began rising earlier in January and February, Cheeka would greet it joyfully with a series of little, happy clucks.  She’d do it just outside my window for about six times, then move on to another area of the yard and repeat her chant to the sun.  It was her little sun-worshiping ritual and it made me smile.

Even though she would run out to greet me and even follow me around the yard sometimes, she would never allow me close enough to touch her.  She always darted away when I made a move toward her.  But she wasn’t afraid of me and often kept up a conversation.

She was aware of the danger a cat presented and when a stray wandered in the yard, she raised the alarm and dashed with the quail to the safety of the hawthorne bushes along the back of our property.  Like a good servant, I went out and shooed the cat away, restoring order in the yard.  But I learned her squawks of alarm and danger from the couple of encounters with the stray cats.

Our dog never bothered her.  He would sometimes chase her, just as he chases the quail, but to Flynn it was a game.  He just wanted to play.   And she fled from him to her hiding spot, clucking in annoyance, not in her alarmed voice.  Even in play, she was aware the dogs and cats were a danger.

So, why, I’ve asked myself several times over the past few days, did she decide to leave the security of our yard and fly over an eight-foot fence to get into the barren dog yard next door?  There was no food there.  No shelter there.  Why did she cross the fence?

Out of curiosity, I think.  She liked to explore.  She was an adventurous bird.

blog, My musings

Past Slipping Away…

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It’s always a little painful when pieces of your past begin to slip away, particularly when they had a big impact on your life. Every actor or singer that was big when I was in my teens who passes on is a little slice of that formative time, a little piece that shaped my youth.  It seems like more and more of them are happening now, almost like a meteor shower of them passing.

Yesterday, a huge chunk of my whole life passed on. I was a teenager when I fell in love with the Vulcan on Star Trek. I read fantasy and science fiction, but the series was the best thing to hit television for me. I became a Trekkie (we were Trekkies then and I am still a proud Trekkie!) – lock, stock and barrel! I campaigned to keep Star Trek on TV. I had a brief correspondence with Gene Roddenberry in the hopes of getting into television writing. I joined Star Base 36 when I moved to Reno where I made lasting friends and we worked then to encourage the first movie be made. I never ceased to support this amazing show and the actors in it. I was never the “too crazy” fan who went into the costume contests and wore alien makeup, although I did wear a hall costume now and then. But I knew a lot of the people who did really get into the costuming and what is now called cosplay.

When I was 19 or 20, I had two particular racing greyhounds, a pair of handsome black beauties named RA’s Star Trek and RA’s Moonraker. One evening the Juarez race track had a special event and Leonard Nimoy was the guest of honor. Both of my dogs were entered in races and I was thrilled to be at the track, even if the dogs weren’t likely to win, and didn’t. But I recall meeting Mr. Nimoy. He was tall, with almost jet black hair and he stood out like a beacon in the crowd of people at the track.   I had a chance to introduce myself and he was charmingly polite as I babbled about how much I enjoyed the Spock character and the whole series. It was a brief, but memorable meeting. Mostly, I simply recalled how dynamic and charismatic he was. How when you saw him, you were instantly drawn to him. He remained a favorite all my life and it was always a joy to see him in a show.

Leonard Nimoy was an icon. He represented so much to a young person who saw a brave new future ahead and one in which there was huge promise. His portrayal of Spock gave us hope for one day finding a friendly presence in the cosmos and Star Trek itself gave us hope that people would one day work together as citizens of Earth and not as the separate nations that still war against each other. That dream is not yet realized as Nimoy left this world yesterday, but the little seed that was planted may yet come to fruition, although not in my lifetime or maybe even in the next few generations, but the dream is not dead.

I trust that, in whatever realm awaits us beyond this one, Leonard’s spirit is reuniting with Dee Kelley, Gene Roddenberry and Jimmy Doohan for some great stories at a smashing galactic pub.

blog, My musings

Before World’s 2015, a Reflection on Figure Skating

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I have been a fan of ice skating for most of my life.  I loved going to ice shows when they came to town and loved to skate, even though my skating was confined to roller rinks since there wasn’t an ice rink in El Paso at the time.  When I was about 12, my mother gave me her old boot roller skates and I did all my skating a rink in the park near my house.  The floor was coated with rubber, so it was a quieter, and slightly slower, surface than wooden floor rinks.  I also came home frequently with rubber burns on my knees and hands from falls and the usual sprained wrist because I was always prone to catching myself on my hands or knees rather than my bottom.

When I moved to Los Angeles, I started ice skating.  One of my roommates was also a big skating fan and we used to go to the Laurel Canyon rink regularly.  We took lessons and as we began to learn more about skating, also learned to appreciate the show and competitive skaters more and more.  It’s easy to underestimate how difficult the jumps and spins they are doing actually are unless you’ve tried it and understand the difference between an inside and outside edge and how you actually the perform the jump properly.  I’ve known a lot of people who could hop around on ice and look like they’re jumping, but it isn’t with the technique that makes them a top ice skater.  I never reached that level either.  I was lucky to do a few simple spins, a waltz jump and some decent spirals.

I followed the successes of our American figure skaters, Peggy Fleming, Dorothy Hamill, Brian Boitano, Scott Hamilton and Kristi Yamaguchi with passion and great pride.  Then in the mid-1990’s, a young lady named Michelle Kwan dominated the sport.  She was, and probably still is, the best and most consistent figure skater to ever compete.  She could bring tears to my eyes with the beauty, grace and quality of her skating.  It’s still incredible that she didn’t win an Olympic medal in her two attempts – that on those days, the most consistent and highly acclaimed skater in the world, didn’t quite make it.  Of course, she missed the mark now and then.  She was human and she had nerves, just like any other skater.  But she also was the most deserving.  Perhaps she failed because there was a greater lesson to be learned, for people who admired her, by her grace and attitude at “winning” the lesser silver medal and not seeing it as defeat.  I still question whether Tara Lipinski should have won the gold medal.  Yes, she did a triple, triple combination that Michelle did not do in the long program, but the long program was supposed to also put the emphasis on artistry and clearly, Michelle had the more artistic and beautiful program.

To understand my feelings on this, you need to look at the quality of the skating.  There are very few skaters who appear to be one with the ice.  They seem to skate from the ice rather than on the ice.  Robin Cousins, Torvill and Dean, Davis and White and Michelle Kwan are among those skaters.  There is a depth, smoothness and magic to their skating that comes from deep knees, strong edges and so much practice to make it look effortless.

As I watched the broadcast program of the 2015 Four Continents competition, I was dismayed by how much the skaters appear to be struggling.  The jumps are harder for the men with the quads being the tough one.  Jason Brown, who is a delight to watch, is still trying to nail one.  The Japanese and Chinese skaters seem to have an advantage in this area as they are smaller and more compact, which means a quicker rotation in the air.  They are also fearless with some of the highest jumps to give them time to get the rotations done.  Evan Lysacek had a definite height disadvantage with being six feet tall, while most skaters are much shorter.  Evan had to work harder to get those rotations in because it’s harder to compact that larger frame in the air.

In the women’s competition, the skating is a mixed bag.  Yuna Kim was the best of the recent skaters, a beautiful technician who listed Michelle Kwan as her idol and inspiration.  She emulated Michelle on the ice and in some ways, it was almost like seeing Michelle. But in the competition, since changing to the point scoring system, the women have almost become cookie-cutter skaters, most of them doing the exact same moves, reaching to stretch their legs over their heads in a Beilman and sometimes achieving positions that are neither graceful nor pretty.  But they get the points.

They are also falling, skating to boring music and showing little flair in their skating.  Gracie Gold and Polina Edmonds show promise.  Ashley Wagner comes across as a spoiled and insincere brat and has been a very inconsistent skater.  Whether Ashley is a nice person is an unknown, but what the viewer sees is someone who seems like a phony.  And none of them seem to skate with the skill, the heart and the joy that Michelle Kwan gave us for over a decade.

Artistry is becoming hard to accomplish amongst all the required elements for scoring. The competition now is laced with required moves and connecting steps that many skaters seem to be struggling to accomplish.  The music has slowed to many piano and violin concertos that lack any dramatic effect to slow songs from pop stars.  Sometimes the music is fast, but then the skaters seem to struggle to keep up with it and sometimes fail.  There are some programs where the music is just background noise if you judge the skating by how well the skater utilizes it.

Well, it’s much harder now with all the required moves.  How well would Michelle Kwan have stood up with the new scoring system?   Consider this, Michelle did seven triple jumps in one program, including a triple-triple.  She also had a beautiful spiral that she extended, changing edges across the whole rink, not just for a few seconds.  She had elegant, well-centered spins and who do you think inspired adding the required added footwork to the scores?  Long before it was something that earned points, Michelle was using connecting footwork, turns and unusual entry positions into the jumps.  When she began working with Lori Nicholl, the wonderful choreographer, Michelle discovered the power of music, took it into her soul and interpreted it on ice.  There was joy in her skating and a deep love of it that transcended the program.  I think if Michelle had not been injured and unable to heal completely prior to the Torino Olympics, that she might well have excelled under the points scoring system and won the gold medal that she so deserved.

Take a look at the video of Michelle’s program from the 2001 World Competition, which she won in spite of problems with her short program.

Perhaps the most beautiful example of Michelle’s artistry and exquisite skating is evident in this exhibition skate from 1998.  She is always in motion, always changing and feeling every beat of the music of “Dante’s Prayer”.  I still grow teary-eyed when I watch it and I long for the artistry that the skaters now seem to lack.

By the way, the first time I saw the three-jump combination done was by Michelle’s main rival, Irena Slutskaya, and she was the only one doing it.  So that was Irena’s contribution to the new points system.   Michelle and Irena traded World titles many times and neither one walked away with a gold Olympic medal.  Both were accomplished and brilliant skaters, but Michelle won the hearts of the world.  That is a hard act to follow, and so far, no one has quite managed it.

blog, Book planning, software chatter

Writing Status and Coercing the Dragon

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Here I am at the start of February and I still have lots on my plate, so to speak. I am a little disappointed with myself that I haven’t worked on my WIP, my young adult novel, since the first week of January.  After the month before NaNo when I completed my fantasy novel and the month of NaNo where I wrote my paranormal thriller and started my YA, I had hoped to complete it in December, but got bogged down with the holidays and other projects.  Then I wrote a little in January and started on the first edit of Funeral Singer: A Song for Marielle.

Sending the Bird into the Beta World

The good news is that the first edit is completed and the book is now out with a few beta readers for the first feedback.  I admit, I am a little nervous about setting my little bird free in the big, bad world, but I hope that the beta readers are enjoying it and will be gentle with the comments.  But I also want them to be honest.  Only if the feedback is honest will the writer grow and learn from the process.  Yes, I hope people like the story and my writing, but I am not perfect and even the best attempt to catch all the problems in a story by the writer is not going to manage it.  I’ve already found things in just glimpsing through it after I sent it out that I need to change or didn’t get caught in the edit.

With the relief of the edit done and another project or two that had to be completed, I’d hoped to get back to the YA in January, but it didn’t happen.  I just put it on my schedule for February with the hope that I can regain my writing pace and complete the first draft this month.

Capturing an Old Novel and Editing for Others

As a side-project, I went back to trying to get the second novel I’d written way back when converted to digital form so that I can revise it and perhaps publish it this year.  This one is a suspense romance along the lines of Mary Stewart’s novels.  I typed a lot of it in, wished a few more times that my scanner had an OCR application on it and tried at least three times to use Dragon Naturally Speaking to read the book to the computer.  More about this in a minute.  I did finally finish getting that novel into digital form this past week, so that’s another in the queue to rewrite.  I have been productive over the past two months, so that’s the good part.

I’ve also taken on a beta read/editing for another writer and that is always an interesting project.  His story is good, but it needs a lot of work.  I’m catching many punctuation and spelling errors, but also quite a few other issues.  I try to beta and edit the way that I hope that my beta readers will with me.  When something puzzles me or causes me to stumble in the reading, I make a note of it.  When the phrasing is awkward or confusing, I suggest changes or point out why it bothers me.  I think all writers have their blind spots when writing.  I know I do and I sometimes cringe when I read it through a month or so after writing it.  But while editing for someone else, I think you also become more aware of your own faults in your writing.  You see something the writer has done and realize that you also do it or something similar to it.  So you learn from the process as well.

Taking on the Dragon

Back to Dragon.

I have to talk about this experience a little bit.  I am on my third version of the program and I have resisted buying any more updates, although there are at least three newer versions of it now.  When I bought my current copy, version 10.0, it was a vast improvement on how it handled the interpretation of my words, but still not perfect.  For those who don’t know, you need to “train” dragon to your own speech pattern, so you read pre-designed texts to it so that it can learn your pronunciations and speech rhythm.  In spite of that, Dragon often stumbles when I try to read my own writing into it.  I think I enunciate pretty clearly, but sometimes it seems like the program makes a wild guess at what you just said because the words it types are so far off.

Using the program has been challenging and oft times frustrating for me.  I have given up more than a few times and returned to typing because I can type faster than the program can analyze, interpret, force me to correct and repeat the words.  I have tried several different mics with it, hoping that it will work better with one of them.

I just recently learned that it does better when I open the Dragon Pad (the word processing program within the program) than if I try to have it type directly into Word.  I then copy and paste from Dragon Pad to Word after a couple of pages of text have been entered.  After about one chapter, it begins to get sluggish, so I delete everything in the Dragon Pad, close it and reopen it and it performs better.  I find it doesn’t recognize words that end in n’t very well and I have to pronounce them with “ent” in order to get them entered correctly, so “couldn’t’ becomes “could-ent” in order for Dragon to understand.  I think voice recognition software has a ways to go to reach Star Trek capability.  I admit, I was amused when the computer had difficulty recognizing Chekov’s instructions in the first reboot movie.

So, that’s been my experience with the Dragon program.  Have any of you used it?  What was your experience?  Tell me about it.