Technology Leaves Me in the Dust

Caught a story on the news that the last big box music store, Virgin, will be closing its doors forever. The company president said that the music CD has gone the way of the 8-track tape and business was no longer feasible. Apple iTunes had 20% of the current market, Amazon Music had 8%, and the remainder of the market was illegal downloads.

He gave an example of the state of album sales: In 1992, Backstreet Boys had the #1 album with 2.5 million units sold. In 2008, Green Day had the #1 album with only 500,000 units. He said that kids today didn't even own a device on which to play a music CD; they're all plugged into iPods. Sigh.

Part of the allure of purchasing a music album was to look at the photos, graphics, liner notes and lyrics. Sometimes there was a sleeper hit on the album that I wouldn't have purchased if I were buying the songs individually. I suppose there's no real need for an artist to produce an "album" any more. Sigh.

I actually have an iPod, but I don't want to listen to music in my ears, I want to rattle the windows with some big, honkin' stereo speakers. Does anyone even own a stereo anymore? Sigh.

Next my sister tells me that movie DVDs will soon be obsolete because of Blu-Ray technology. The other sister bought us a DVD player back in 2002 because she thought we were pitiful because we didn't own one. We've watched maybe 20 movies on it in the last seven years. Maybe we are pitiful. I do however, have a VHS player and watch one of my seven or so favorite VHS movies on dull afternoons.

My on-line art group has decided Yahoo! Groups is getting too buggy and has switched to Facebook. I'm not drinking the Kool-Aid and joining Facebook. I'm *very* sure I don't want anybody to find me, being in the Witness Protection program and all.

I suppose I could join under my assumed identity, but that would be one more place I would have to go check every day, and that ain't-a happening any time soon. I can barely (and sometimes don't) keep up with my two little blogs, the art group on Yahoo, their accompanying Flickr pool, and Twitter.

I don't text on my cell phone and I have never, ever done the on-line chat/messenger thing. That's a little too immediate and invasive for me. Either call me on the phone if you need an answer right now, or send me an email and I'll get back to you.

Oh, about the blogs...apparently blogging is so "last year" and all the cool kids don't blog anymore. They Twitter or update their Facebook page. Eeh. The blog for me was never about my day-to-day activities, but more a space to share my timeless, long-winded thoughts about life. I'll stick with blogging until Blogger becomes obsolete too.

Great Big Sigh. I'm feeling a bit obsolete and behind the times, but then I've never been on the cusp of fashion and chic. And I have never, ever been one of the cool kids.

New Toys

Blogger buddy Lost in CO kept bugging me to get a digital drawing tablet. She assured me I would love it. I believed her but money is tight right now and the smallest one costs over $100. Really nice ones with graphics software hit around the $800 mark. "Buy a used one!" she says. "I got mine at a yard sale!"

Well, since no store within a 300 mile radius sells these things, the chances of finding a used one were zero. "No problem!" says Lost, "I've got a friend who will sell you one cheap!"

Not only did the ever-bubbly Lost acquire a used tablet from the friend, she downloaded the drivers, found some graphics software, tested it out on two different computers, then packaged it up and sent it across the country.

My new toy! Woot! It came with an electronic pen and a six-button mouse that I haven't yet figured out what all the buttons are for.



I've become an electronic crackhead with this thing. I don't eat, I don't sleep; all I do is draw. Endorphins are spewing from the right side of my brain. Heaven!

The Obama-McCain political cartoons were all done using this and I was able to tidy up some old pen-n-ink drawings too. I've been experimenting with the settings trying to get the cleanest drawings possible. The Waiter Brought a Tray drawing came out nice and crisp. Woo Hoo!

The ever-bubbly Lost also included a surprise in the box...a GORGEOUS leather sketchbook.



When I opened the box and saw it, the digital tablet was temporarily forgotten. I held the sketchbook to my nose to inhale the rich smell of the leather, and fondled all over the thick, creamy pages. Ooohhhh....art supply orgasm. Then I sat in the middle of the floor, hugged it to my breast, and had myself a good weep.

Lost probably never imagined a chunk of cowhide and wood pulp would elicit such a response. Yes, I love the new digital tablet. It will be a useful tool for a good while, but eventually it will become obsolete and get replaced. The sketchbook however will be CHERISHED forever. I will drag it around with me until the day I die. It will hold all my little brain secrets and will never be obsolete or go out of style. It is a truly magnificent gift.

Thank you Lost for you thoughtfulness and generosity. You will never know how much this gift healed my tattered soul.

Take a trip and never leave the farm

I have been entertaining myself in the far reaches of the Internets. Actually, it was just on Google, but it took me places I would have never imagined I could go.

First, Google Earth. It's a fun little program where you can spy into people's backyards, but the real thrill comes when you click the little planet icon. That switches to a view of outer space. Wowza!

Here's a screen shot of what it first looks like:



But if you double click anywhere out there, it will take you zooming into the stars of a constellation. Here is the close-up of Cancer, the constellation in the middle of the first shot:



Warning: Do not double click if partaking of recreational drugs. You will fall into your computer and be lost forever.


Told ya. Didn't believe me did ya?

I got lost in space for about six hours the other day. I clicked away like a madwoman tripping out amongst the stars and I was stone cold sober.

If you have ever pooh-poohed the notion that there was intelligent life out there, playing with this for a while will change your mind. Odds are there is somebody out there looking at me just like I am looking at them.

It wouldn't surprise me at all to find a black monolith floating around out there somewhere.

If you switch back to Earth view you can spy on people, but actually the plain ol' Google Maps is more user friendly and much easier to navigate.

Type in any address in a major city (over 100,000 roughly) and it will take you to a street level view. This is something recent on Google Maps, because I don't think it was there a month or two ago. This is not the highly pixelated satellite view that's been made to look 3D, it's an actual photo of the location.

Anyway, the usual little red blood drop will appear close to the address. Then in a pop-up word balloon looking thingie, it will show a street level view. Click on that.

A little orange guy will appear and the green thing under him will point towards the view shown. You can grab him and fly him around to get to the next block or even across town. He just has to stay on the furry blue streets.



I chose to eyeball Uncle Buck's Marina Towers in Chicago. Here's his front door:



Then I skootched up the view to look at the skyline.



SWEET.

This will be a boon to Internet stalkers, international terrorists, and Dog the Bounty Hunter. Now Dog can see if your car is parked in the driveway.

Whooda thunk it that some little ol' girl in the backwoods of Arkansas could take a trip to Chicago, New York, Niagara Falls, and Sagittarius without ever leaving the comfort of her computer chair?

I love technology.

The Scribbler and Artpad

I stumbled across a cool on-line doodler program thingie called The Scribbler.

You draw a quick line drawing then the program scribbles it in. You can vary the line weight and colors. Here's my first scribble.

And another one. I couldn't help myself:
OK, I'm addicted.

Moving on....

The other cool program thingie is Artpad. It works a lot like MS Paint, but for some reason is much smoother and easier to control when using a mouse. You can also set the opacity of the color which you can't do in Paint.

Here's my quickie doodle from Artpad:

One cool feature with Artpad is that you can replay your entire painting process. It's kinda cool watching the paintbrush move on its own.

You can also click through the gallery of paintings other people have done and watch the paintbrush repaint them too.

Both programs are a fun way to kill time when you should be doing something productive.

Toilet Water Turbine

I have a kernel of an idea. It's not quite congealed yet and some experimentation would have to be done. The idea starting forming after watching several programs on TV and my unfortunate encounter with the Maytag repair man.

1) I saw a show on ancient technologies where the ancients of Rome or Greece used water wheels to saw marble slabs, turn nine mill wheels at once, and power a row of several 100-pound sledgehammers to crush stone. There is a lot of power in falling water and we currently don't harness enough of it. Smaller water dams originally constructed for flood control only are now being retrofitted to be electric power generating stations.

2) A house flipper wanted to rehab a house using "green" technologies, i.e., recycling the ripped out waste materials, using energy efficient windows and appliances, and using environmentally friendly products. This house is supposed to use half the energy requirements than before the rehab. An energy saving house is good, but why not make an energy *generating* house?

3) The Maytag repairman said in three years or so, I would not be able to replace my extra-large capacity washing machine. The only choices will be front loaders that wash 16 pairs of jeans with a cup of water. Dang! I will be forced to conserve water and energy whether I want to or not.

So, all that got me to thinking about what natural resources we have here in the United States that are currently untapped. How can we create energy without crapping out the environment or depleting our natural resources?

Answer: Water plus gravity.

Water is sloshing to and from my house every day by gravity only. Same with my neighbor's house and every house in the city. Once the water falls from the top of the water tower, gravity alone moves it along through the city until it returns to the sewage plant. Millions of miles of fresh water and sewer pipes with running water. That's a lot of potential energy.

Why can't I put a little tiny generator on my fresh water supply line and my outgoing sewer line so that every time I flush my potty, I generate electricity? Just a little bit, mind you, just a little bit. But just as a few drops eventually make a flood, a few sparks will eventually make electricity. I could generate with the water pressure filling the tank; the water falling from the tank to the bowl, from the bowl to the sewer pipe; then several places along the sewer pipe until it reaches the street.

If I could generate a little bit of power with the water running through my residence, think about what the city could do with the water running through their pipes. The downspout on the city water tank is six or eight feet across. Consider the amount of electricity that bad boy could generate. Water is running through that pipe all day every day. It's about as large as the outlet on the dam. Doesn't it have the same potential? I wonder how fast that thing lets out water?

Maybe it goes too slow because it also has to maintain pressure through the system. However, as the size of the pipe decreases, the velocity of the flow increases. (Learned that on Water Works of the Ancient World, The History Channel.) Could a smaller, alternate pipe be diverted to a turbine that would generate electricity?

Power Potties may be economically unfeasible now, but in a few years, they may be a required installation for all new home construction. That and the front-loading, 16-jeans-in-a-cup washing machine.

Just a thought.

One Ringy Dingy

My cell phone was almost dead. The battery wouldn't hold a charge. Hubby declared I needed a new one. I hate cell phones.

I told Hubby to cancel my contract and just get me a throwaway phone from Wally World. I only made about three calls last year on the damn thing and those could have been made on my land line. I get 700 minutes of local and long-distance calls a month. I use maybe 20 minutes a year.

Nope, Hubby said I needed a fancy new phone. Off to the phone store we go.

The cute, bubbly salesperson ran through all the choices and Hubby narrowed it down to two. He asked what Choice A had that Choice B didn't. She picked up Choice A and said, "This one has more junk in the trunk."

Neither Hubby nor I said a word. You could hear the crickets chirping in the ensuing silence. I'm sure he felt, as I did, about 170 years old at that moment. We had no idea what she meant but figured if we were 20-something that assessment would have made perfect sense.

Whatever "more junk in the trunk" meant, that's the phone I ended up with. Miz Bubbly got the new phone programmed and ran through all the features: Blue Tooth technology, Internet access, text messaging, camera, e-mail, different ring tone for each caller, how to get ring tones. (She had somewhere around 80 on her phone.)

After about ten minutes of this tutorial, I was in overwhelm mode. When she asked if I had any questions, I said, "This phone will just ring, right? And I can just talk on it?"

I suppose this was akin to asking the Maserati salesman, "This car will just go from Point A to Point B, right?"

Dang. I didn't want a fancy new phone. Hubby got a fancy new phone earlier this year. I can't figure out how to answer it or turn it off or on. When it rings it wheedles some noise that just ain't right. I want the phone to ring the same kinda ring my home phone rings so I recognize the fact that it is a phone ringing. I don't want it to play something that sounds like a robotic mating call. I have a variety of electronics chirping at me these days. I don't want another one. Did I mention I hate cell phones?

I don't need Blue Tooth technology, I need Blue Hair technology. I am a rotary dial kinda girl. Just call me Ernestine.

From Punch Tape to Jump Drives

Tonight I was having trouble getting my blog formatted the way I wanted. In frustration I yelled at the computer screen, "I can write in WYSIWYG or I can write in HTML, but not in this hybrid!" Yes, yes, I know, my sanity is called into question when I talk to inanimate objects. At least the screen didn't reply.

My brother-in-law (who is much younger and more computer savvy than me) turned with a puzzled look and asked, "What is Wizzywig?"

It took me back for a minute that he hadn't heard of it before. I figured anyone who had ever touched a computer knew what that meant. I told him it was before his time, somewhere after punch tape and before Windows. He looked even more puzzled and queried, "Punch tape???" Oh geez, I'm getting old.

My first experience on a computer was in ninth grade in Houston, Texas using punch tape. We had to write a simple computer program, not more than ten lines of code or so. We punched the tape with the code and ran it on the computer. If the program ran as expected we passed. If it didn't we had to try and try again until it ran correctly. It was a tedious process.

In 1982 I worked for a company that owned two DEC PDP-11/70s, which were top of the line computers in real-time processing. These two behemoths had their own room with their own air-conditioning system and disc drives the size of serving platters. There were only a dozen or so in the entire state of Arkansas and we had two of 'em. Each one had 100 MB of disk space and 128K of memory. I think a $1.00 calculator hanging on a card in the check-out lane has more than that today.

By 1992 I was working on a 286 PC creating massive spreadsheets and printing them on dot matrix printers. If the spreadsheet didn't fit on one page I had to decide which columns to delete to make it work. I finally got a 486 with WYSIWYG capabilities and I thought I was in heaven. Woo Hoo! Then Windows and Microsoft Office came along and report writing was a snap.

Tonight I was complaining about having to tote a non-erasable CD to the store to make photo prints. Because I can't erase the photo files I have already printed, I have to scroll through all those at the store to get to the two or three I do want. Hubby said I should use the jump drive instead. We have a jump drive??? Yep, it's been collecting dust in the bottom of *his* camera bag for months. His mom gave it to him because the keyring hole was broken. Woo Hoo! Mine now!

As I pondered on this slim little 2" gadget of plastic I realized it will hold more information than a fleet of 486s; more than the two DEC PDP-11/70s sitting in their specially air-conditioned room; and more than a warehouse holding a forest of punch tape.

I can put this thingy in my pocket.

Oh, how far we have come.