Breaking the seal on an old new Arduino Duemilanove

Subtitled, “When in Rome, you feel like you’re designed by tinker.it”

Digging through a pile of old electronic parts, I found a packaged Arduino kit, which includes a solderless breadboard, USB cable, resistors, LEDs, switch and some connectors.

What are we grown-up kids learning and teaching?

I know all seven billion of us are connected so I wonder why a person wants to turn remote-controlled airplanes into flying bombs and break some of our good connections.

That’s not the way a well-educated hacker should think.

When someone says, “You’re the bomb,” they mean you have what it takes to make a positive influence on others, not that you’re literally a future newsworthy glob of spontaneous combustion.

Some days, I have to show how to be a positive influence by example.

Yes, an Arduino-based watch is interesting, and certainly scores points in the right social circles, but let’s think about the bigger picture, where engineering, design, social entrepreneurship and fun meet.

I’ve thought about setting up a photocell in the window of my study, connecting the cell to an Arduino and broadcasting to the Internet when enough sunlight is shining on the window to trigger the cell to “talk,” thus setting up a discussion about when solar power is appropriate for someone living in a cabin in the woods who’s connected to the electronic social network.

We’ll see.  Hacking is not just breaking in or breaking down maliciously – it’s also about cutting away the dead wood to find and nurture a living center seeking new ways to prosper.

Maybe I’ll program my solar cells to do something interesting, program an automatic birdfeeder that detects and scares away squirrels (thought: what’s the difference between birds and mammals? hmm…).  Maybe those high tech rednecks down the street can propose a useful idea for all the electronic junk in this room – CRTs, LCD monitors, old Macintosh computers, old laptops, electronic keyboards, model rockets, model airplanes, telescope, audio equipment, floppy disks, capacitors, resistors, transistors, Book of the Future, crystal ball,….

I’ve also got a storyline about our solar system to write, managing the location of killer asteroids/crashing satellites, my unhappy mother in-law, my wife’s stress load and an economy that’s naturally cooling down cyclically (the supercomputer shows that economies are like weather systems, with “seasons” that can’t be stopped, no matter how much we want to pump nutrients into trees (on which money grows) whose leaves are falling in autumn – winter is as normal in some parts of the world as air and water – are you part of an ant colony or a happy-go-lucky grasshopper?).

As 2011 draws closer to its end, I am closer to releasing the information some of you requested.  Think I’ll need the month of November to put it all together.

Well, there’s a call coming in on the secret network – the Committee wants my attention again.

Talk to you later.

Gotta see if the new Kindle lineup is worth prepurchase.  Most of them cost the same as a nice dinner date – which to choose?

Because of YOU!

As a millionaire (or former millionaire, depending on how much my investment portfolio has plunged lately), I contemplate a positive future.

As a writer who splits thought sets into the voices of many characters in order to dramatise a story and then flattens the characters out, running them through a muliplexer such that they tend to flow onto this blog as a single voice, I contemplate a fiction that is timeless, except for blatant product placement.

For instance, thanks goes to Sheondra at Burger King, Dondra at Walmart, Brian/LaWanda at HarborChase, Joe/Harold/dancers at KCDC, Victoria’s Cafe, Club/Townhouse crackers and the cast of billions who support my lifestyle unknowingly.  A nod to the young lady sitting at the CSS counter who had to put on spectacles to read her mobile phone.

On a personal note, I’ve been depressed all day.  Yes, it’s just a game but, daggone it, why did the Atlanta Braves have to crash so spectacularly at the end of the regular season?  Guess I’ll stick to Vols football, win or lose, the rest of the year.  Justin Hunter may be gone but I seem to remember there’re something like 80 or so men left on the roster to fight for the SEC East division title and then the SEC football championship.  I’ll accept a winning season as a consolation if Dooley’s staff hasn’t figured out how to teach the players to avoid injury and win at the same time.

How can one be a millionaire and also broke/unemployed?  Make sure investments in your name are untouchable until you really need ’em.

Sure, I’d like to buy the latest must-have trinkets but then again, I don’t need them.

As someone noted elsewhere online, most families could buy at least one iPhone with the money they use to buy food every week.

So far, I’ve needed food more than I want a phone tethered to a monthly mobile/data plan.

I’ve pretty much weaned myself off of facebook, never used twitter and once a month or so lengthen my LinkedIn contact list.  Occasionally, I remember to review my incoming business emails.

Yes, I check multiple websites daily, or read summaries thereof when I’m bored, but I also spend many hours a day watching clouds pass overhead, not a worry clouding my thoughts.  Read books or take a walk, too.

What is your definition of happiness?

Enough about today, let’s talk about tomorrow.

Has the fog burned off yet?

A list of books piles higher in the house.

Piles of books rise higher, the reader reluctant to dive in during the warm summer months, content to lie down on the sofa in the sunroom, watch the world go by, snooze, check Nothing off the daily to-do list one more time.

So a book had to be moved into the bathroom to be read.

The writer – Geerat Vermeij.  The story – his life story, the story of a boy blinded by disease as a toddler and going on to become a successful scientist.

Other stories he has told: one explanation of the diversity in ocean systems, for instance.

Adaptation, competition, genetic drift, specialisation – more words with multiple meanings in our continuing conversation as the proverbial blind people standing in one place describing a single aspect/feature of an elephant.

However, we tend to wander around, observe from multiple locations, regardless of physical abilities.

I had vivid dreams last night, sparked by a challenge to myself to give the widest diversity of input to the supercomputer, network of hackers and business associates so they can help figure out what is wrong with the idea that our current economic problems can be solved by motivating people to consume more and take on debt in order to motivate them to work and pay off the debt, preferably revolving debt while consuming/buying more and more and more and more.

What if the produce/consume model is wrong, regardless of its implementation in societies that are primarily capitalistic or primarily communistic?

Setting aside religious objections to the model of life as evolutionary biology, what is the next revolution in the evolution of our born/eat/reproduce/sleep/die social interaction set?

While the BRICS presumably builds upon the old middle class stabilisation model, what can the EUSA do to establish a more successful model of sustainable species growth?

Do we throw out everything and start over; that is, foment revolution on a massive scale, disrupting the global economy to create something we hope, from our angle that only includes a detailed analysis of the past and a limited view of the future, is better in the longterm?

Or is it only a matter of shifting perceptions?

What was once, in this country, a democratic republic that partially regulated the capitalistic economic system, becomes a democratic republic that is controlled by a centrally planned capitalistic economic system?

In other words, people can still vote for legislators to write laws about our social behaviours, creating rewards and punishments for how we treat one another as individuals or perceived members of groups.   We separate the management of our economy from the government, voting with our money for the companies led and/or owned by those who dedicate themselves to plan the best allocation of resources – raw material, land, people.

What is the effect on an economy/society if more public roads became private toll roads?

What is the effect on an economy/society if other public services – schools, common defense (police/military), firefighting, social safety net (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food assistance) – become privately managed, meaning you have to directly pay and/or work for the service(s)?

How do we promote love and compassion instead of selfish greed, hoarding and fear?

How do we provide a sense of stability rather than prey on insecurities?

With seven billion different behaviour sets (and growing), how many different ways must we describe the new tools we’ve created to ensure everyone understands we can have access to adequate sustenance, if we want it.

And if we or you don’t want it, that’s okay.  No system or systems will accommodate every want and need, no matter how inclusive it may try to be.

More later – the analysts who run the supercomputer are ready for input, the hackers have found a way to tap into more computer systems to increase the supercomputer’s virtual processing power, and my business associates…well, I can’t talk about what they want me to talk with them about right now.

Mr. Slim Weighs In

Toward what or whom do you gravitate?

I, too, don’t want emotion to cloud my judgment but shouldn’t emotion be involved if I’m truly human?

How well do you cover your tracks?

Can you tell which secret projects the Rocket City Rednecks have worked on by watching their skill sets in action on an edited-for-TV show?

Do you have the sensitivity to hear the voices of others synchronised into the one talking in front of you?

Are you a true believer in the pebble-in-the-pond theory of reverse engineering current states of energy?

Do you understand how time travel really works?

Can you detach yourself from everything, including yourself, in order to hear the silent rhythms of the universe?

Is KISS your guiding principle?

It’s nice to keep the self feeling important just enough to know the self is truly unimportant but ego (i.e., the recognition of oneself in the social web) is a vital part of being human so you balance the best you can, tipping the scales in the wrong direction many a time, refining the finetuning of holding the balance as you go along.

Letting go, letting go, letting go – what am I missing this time?  What have I added?  The “I,” of course!

Every subculture deserves its positive, life-affirming attitude [“as long as it doesn’t interfere with mine,” right?] as long as or even if it doesn’t know it is part of a larger set of abutting and intersecting subsets/subcultures.

What happens if we directly bail out the consumer?  Other than the perception (certainly from my point) that the underwater/indebted/bankrupt consumer should not be freed from irresponsible personal financial management (and while we’re at this blame game, that person is just as likely to be an uninformed voter and maybe a bad parent), what is the reality?

If stockbrokers supposedly vetted by respectable financial companies’ HR departments are acting like psychopaths in their trading habits, some of them taking down whole companies or causing CEOs like the one at UBS to quit, meaning that internal company controls are no better there than internal thought patterns/controls of individual consumers, then why are we reluctant to forgive mortgages, credit card debt, etc., of individuals but readily willing to bail out badly managed financial institutes and political entities like Greece?

What is wrong with the balance of power?

The peasantry have little effect on overall purchasing power, that’s why.

This parroting parrot has squawked about the emperour’s new clothes until it’s hoarse but the observation is still true.

We, the people, no longer matter.

We’re back to the days when only the landed gentry had a say in the law of the land.

That’s why I’m thinking about not voting in the 2012 U.S. Presidential election for the first time in my life.

I just can’t see where any of what I say or do as a broke, out-of-work individual fits into a single vote, especially in a political entity (in this case, a state) that’ll most likely vote the way it has recently voted for U.S. Presidents, regardless of which way I’ll cast my vote.

Even in so-called swing states, if I lived there, my vote would still be just one vote, putting in office a person who is just as purple as Bush or Obama, a surfer riding the waves of aggressive military-industrial corporate policies.

Don’t get me wrong.  I personally benefit from aggressive military-industrial corporate policies.

In fact, I’m a strong proponent of the global corporatising that sits over the imaginary structures we call political entities/national governments.

Take this storyline that you can’t tell if it’s real or imaginary – me in charge of the Committee that runs the show.  It’s a lot easier to rule seven billion when they all are connected through the same macrocultural interests.

But there’s a difference between my being able to destroy people, businesses and rockets at the snap of my finger and my being an individual in plain sight, sitting here – or being served a chopped chicken stuffed baked potato by Mary at Gibson’s BBQ – who has to find a simple place in society despite severe social anxiety and situational depression.

And, then, erasing all thoughts of self to live invisibly as just another set of states of energy in this section of the universe that is shifting like a bubble within a bubble or a bouncy ball floating and banging around within a bigger bouncy ball at the five-and-dime store.  A fake snowflake shaken around in a souvenir snow globe by a bored tourist trapped in a gift shoppe after a speedy haute couture “adventure in an exotic foreign land.”

We forget what’s been said before so we can say it again as if we’re the first on the edge of terra incognito.

I do not exist.

And yet, I do.

The paradox is not supposed to resolve itself.

It is.

That’s all that matters.

I write this while sitting on my posteriour and wearing bedroom slippers.

I am.

And yet, I am not.

Imagine the possibilities of the Internet of things in just a few months, let alone years, if every kid on the block had easily-programmable Arduino-like devices to connect their imaginations to the Internet.  What if everyone’s heartbeat rate was available for view in realtime – what kind of rhythmic percussive symphony would it compose on the fly?

The average age of gamers is 37, I read.  There’s more than one mobile phone per person in some parts of the world.  What are you doing with your time?

Vanity – Not One of the Varieties of Life

He sat and remembered her eyes again.

They met, or rather, their eyes met, as they scanned the dance hall looking for a partner.

The blind have a world of senses before them, enjoying life to the fullest despite the lack of eyesight.

But these future dance partners were not blind.

Their eyes met.

One set, dark brown, intricate patterns noticeable only at close range.

The other, golden rings encapsulating hazel, green and blue hues swirling toward the center of the orbs.

The eyes were like magnets, opposite poles tugging the bodies along.

“Do you know the Viennese waltz?”

“No, but I’m willing to try.”

They spun around the room like ice skaters, one-two-three, one-two-three, seconds turning into minutes, until they were out of breath.

At the end of the dance, they stopped and looked at each other.

The eyes were like magnets, opposite poles tugging the bodies along.

“Do you want to dance again?”

“Phew!  Give me a moment.”

The early autumn air, humid, full of the promise of winter but warm, produced a sheen on the dancers’ faces.

“It’s burning up in here.  Wanna take a walk?”

“Sure.  Let me grab my purse.”

At the door, their eyes met again.

The eyes were like magnets, opposite poles tugging the bodies along.

“Is there much to see in this part of town?”

“Not for a few blocks.”

“Then let’s go!”

Invigorated by the dancing, they raced each other from street corner to street corner, running past the warnings of “No Walking” signs, the roads nearly deserted.

They stopped in front of a convenience store.

“You know what?  I’m thirsty.”

“Me, too.”

At the door, their eyes met again.

The eyes were like magnets, opposite poles tugging the bodies along.

One purchased a bottle of water, the other a bottle of popular high-energy soda.

They walked a couple of blocks, not speaking, just looking at the sidewalk, then the building facades, then the occasional car passing by, then interesting items in trinket shops and finally, back to their eyes.

The eyes were like magnets, opposite poles tugging the bodies along.

They stopped in front of an apartment complex.

“I have a friend who lives here.  I wonder if she’s home.”

“Could be.  Why don’t you ring her?”

No answer.

At the door, their eyes met again.

The eyes were like magnets, opposite poles tugging the bodies along.

They leaned toward each other and kissed.

Their eyes met again.

The eyes were like magnets, opposite poles tugging the bodies along.

They kissed again.

“Should we go back and dance?”

“Sure.”

They took their time returning, memorising each other’s eye patterns because, in the moment, there is no tomorrow.