Last modified: Wednesday, September 01, 2010

MENU Navigation Home Page Blog Archive My Novel General Info Alternative Energy Off Grid Shed What's Linux? Photo Tours Photos Home o Pikes Peak o August 2005 trip o Tombstone 2007 o World Aquarium o NM Aquarium o 07-06 Missouri o May 2007 o Leanna Wedding o 2006 Connecticut - ePhotoMagic.Com - Google Pics Fun Stuff My Amazing Mazes ESP Experiment #1 ESP Experiment #2 Rotating Dots Fun Phone Math Personal Info About Wayne About Shelly My Childhood About my Mom

Time Gods Progress

Since getting Time Gods from Radha Mohan in December, I have gone through the whole manuscript from start to finish, and now my wife is going through it again. She is basically our punctuation and spelling person, but points out sentences or paragraphs that don't make sense or are poorly written. Yesterday she had me rewrite the chapter where Paul and Mary are sitting with Prabhupada as he does a kirtan and lecture. She suggested we see this chapter from Mary's point of view instead of Paul's, and it was relatively easy to change around. Boy what an improvement!

If it's going to finally be published, after all, we want it to be the best it can be. Mistakes will make it look badly.

Radha Mohan said the dialogue in the chapter where Dale first meets Paul was tedious, so today I edited that down significantly, and removed the "burning bottle" incident from the book altogether. It reads much better.

So work is coming along.

Recap of 2009

In another article I'll write about the incredible changes in my life in the last decade. In this article, I'll recap developments in the last year.

When 2009 began, my mother had just died. It was the first year of the rest of my life that I will spend without her. I have missed her dearly throughout the whole year.

In 2009 our dog, Missy, died. We will miss her. She was old, and loved.

In 2009 we adopted a new dog to replace Missy. His name is Cody, and he's a bundle of energy and huge.

In 2009 we passed our seventh wedding anniversary, which people say is an important mile marker in a marriage. We have rediscovered our deep friendship that we share for each other. We are each other's best friend and lovers as long as we live.

In 2009 we inherited money from my mother's estate, paid all of our bills and became and remain debt free.

In 2009 I installed Ubuntu Linux on my new desktop computer, which is my one and only operating system.

In 2009 we moved Donnie and Leanna out into their own apartment, and for the most part have maintained them ever since.

In 2009 I became “mentor trained” at work.

We made a lot of new friends in 2009.

We made our first motorcycle trip with a group of fellow motorcycle enthusiasts. We traveled to Manitou Springs on that trip, the second trip to the same place in as many years.

In 2009 I promised Shelly I would watch football if she stopped littering. We each have honored our promises and I've learned a lot about football since then.

In 2009 I got my Time Gods novel back from my editor and began the final edit. I hope the book will be published in 2010.

2009 was the year of solar and wind energy. I set up an alternative off-grid energy system that powers outdoor flood lights and all of my outdoor Christmas lights for 2009.

Happy new year 2010, everyone!

Well, it's a new year and a new decade. A lot happened in my life in the last decade and a lot has happened in our lives in the last year. More on that another day, 'cause tonight we're celebrating the new year.

Have a great year and a great new decade!

Quantum Fluctuations and the Big Bang

It's a question of world view, a philosophy of life, seeing into the ultimate cause of everything. Everything came from nothing.

Kaboom. That's how scientists view the beginning of the universe. According to physicists who get paid to think about this stuff, the big bang was caused by “quantum fluctuations” which, if you read about it with an open mind, sounds like doublespeak.

“Quantum fluctuation is the temporary appearance of energetic particles out of nothing, as allowed by the Uncertainty Principle. It is synonymous with vacuum fluctuation.” Oh, okay. I got it. I was wondering if vacuum fluctuation was the same thing, and now I've got to go read about the Uncertainty Principle to understand what they just said. The Uncertainty Principle allows energetic particles to appear out of nothing, so I'm sure glad someone came up with that Principle in the first place.

See what I mean? Doublespeak.

At the core of the whole issue is trying to understand where the heck everything came from. Mankind has been looking into that for a long time. Religionists believe it was all created by God, but mainstream scientists don't buy it because that's just superstition in their mind. There is no empiric evidence of a creator dude creating everything, and even if there was, there's got to be laws of physics that explain how he would manage to create the stuff that's all around us.

Here is where different branches of science all come together to try to prove the point that everything came from nothing. Physics, astronomy, biology, archeology – all of these big branches of highly paid university professors and grant seekers – come together to offer evidence that supports this world view: everything came from fluctuations in the vacuum of empty space.

But it's an unproven theory which is born of many other unproven theories. The difference between this unproven theory and others is that this is the accepted theory, as deemed by some unseen entity somewhere known as a body of people that decides that this is what the official line of the scientists is going to be.

Because, if you're a scientist, and you don't go along with the accepted theory and come up with your own theory, it's a long uphill battle which could spell a ruin to your whole career if you don't manage to gain acceptance. There's plenty of stories out there that weave a tale about scientific folk that have been ruined by going against the tide.

There are a lot of run of the mill scientists that are paid to make political stands. For example you can find scientists that are alarmed by global warming, and then you can do a Google search for the word scientists and the first thing at the top of the list you'll find is “scientists against global warming.”

These are not the kind of scientists I'm talking about – they don't mold the world view of how everything was created – they just participate in politics or put on white gowns and look at petri dishes.

The real hard core dudes, the ones that decide what is “accepted” theory, are the big and powerful bigwigs of the how everything got here theory that is the point on the horizon that all the other branches of science are working toward. These dudes aren't bothered by the Rush Limbaugh supported “scientists against global warming,” because they don't see those people as a threat.

However, come along an independent scientists who challenges the accepted theories, then he can become an outcast, rejected and laughed upon and have a ruined career in a heartbeat.

Heaven forbid – oh wait, that's an inappropriate expression in this context – the quantum fluctuations of the vacuum of space forbid, someone might challenge the idea that everything came from nothing.

I am not a scientist. I don't know where everything came from. Religion has taught me it came from God. I don't know if it did or not. It's here. I think trying to explain that it all came from nothing is a religion in itself, however. It doesn't make sense to me.

But who are we to question quantum physics?

The elementary waves theory, a brain child of my cousin, Lewis Little, challenges quantum physics by offering an alternative theory to the inherently contradictory aspects of quantum mechanics. Little states these phenomena are not inherently contradictory. They are understandable.

Yet, a debate now rages to discredit Lewis Little. “Little's Theory of Elemental Waves purports to provide an explanation for the results without violating locality,” writes Robin Craig on his MonoRealism Philsophy website. “Dr Harriman has criticised Dr Lewis Little's Theory of Elemental Waves … on the grounds that locality is indeed violated.”

See? Gobledegook intended to offer doubt about Lewis Little's theory that there's a perfectly logical explanation for the universe that doesn't involve Quantum leaps of faith.

Artificial Intelligence is Already Here

Your computer already thinks. It already has artificial intelligence. It doesn't need AI programs to think, and everyone's got it all wrong.

It's time to rethink the whole Artificial Intelligence issue. The idea was that the brain is just a complicated computer, so we should be able to build a computer that does what the brain does: think. Then we can have robots and self-aware computers that talk to us, and all that kind of good stuff.

On the other side of the aisle, however, are the folks that get offended that the brain is just a complicated computer. They say the brain is a spiritual thing, that humans are created by God, and that it's irreligious to assume that computers will ever think, because a computer doesn't have a soul and necessarily can never be like us.

And the argument, even used by me many times in the past, is that everyone knows your desktop computer is just a machine. It can't do anything without human intervention. It's only science fiction that lets you believe the darn thing will one day be able to think on it's own.

Well, I was wrong.

Computers do think. And so does your cable modem, your router, your television and even your microwave oven. Enter the future. The machines think.

Of course, their thinking is limited, like a small animal. A small animal has a small brain and is therefore limited in what it can do with that brain. It can't learn to read, for example. But still your dog thinks, your cat thinks, and your PC is thinking. Right now.

Your computer is very busy thinking about how to move data here and there, how to get the right stuff up on the screen and how to keep it on the screen. Your PC or Mac monitors your keyboard constantly in case you press a key, and then it has to take the little electrical input and do something with it. That's advanced, fast thinking.

Your router is thinking all the time, as well. It's thinking about all that stuff coming in from the Internet, and it has to send it to the right computers through the lines hooked up to the back of it. Even your toaster is thinking in this kind of rudimentary fashion – okay the toast is done, pop up.

I'm not just saying it. Everyone knows it. Even those that used to say they would never think.

Rather than admit defeat, however, the other side of the aisle decided to move the goal-posts and declare a “new rule.” Now that people realize machines can and do think, the new gotcha goal post was placed further down the field at free will. Now the premise is “computers can't have free will.”

And I think that's a smoke screen. What does free will have to do with it? Are we interested in creating a monster that decides it hates humans and by it's own free will starts getting rid of us? Obviously not. We're interested in creating machines that help us live our lives better, because we're selfish and don't care what the computers think as long as we're happy in our lives.

Meanwhile, the computer is busy even sitting without input, thinking and thinking, always busy doing something. True, the machine is too constricted to worry about free will by virtue of hardwired circuitry and lack of movable appendages. And the computer lacks a nervous system so it can't feel when you touch the keyboard.

Your computer doesn't need an Artificial Intelligence program running in order to think because it's already thinking on the hardware level. The AI program is just so the computer can communicate with us and convince us that it thinks. The problem is that the computer has been thinking since it was turned on, and the AI program that loads isn't going to tell us what's in the computer's sub-conscious mind.

Furthermore, it's not just your computer, but the toaster and the microwave oven too, all thinking on the hardware level, doing what they were designed to do, and being very attentive about it, with no capacity or desire to have free will.

Proving free will exists in computers is a smoke screen because we don't want our computers and machines to have free will in the first place. If computers and microwaves could have free will, what would come of it? Nothing good, that's for sure. Maybe your computer would destroy your files because it decided it didn't like what you had on your hard disk. Or suppose your microwave was in perfect working order, but due to free will it decides not to cook for you. Would that make you happy? Of course not. That's why no one's going to build one. But they can think.

So there you have it. Machines that think. We're living in the future right now.

Programs to Improve Windows 7

I read the following paragraph on a website promoting Windows 7: “Windows 7 is a big improvement over Vista, and a pretty convenient OS in general—but it's by no means perfect. These 10 downloads improve Windows 7's looks, functions, and make it easier, safer, and more convenient to upgrade to.”

My oh my. Does that say what I think it says? Lets examine that paragraph.

Note the author states “Windows 7 is a big improvement over Vista...” That means he's admitting what everyone knows, including Microsoft, that Vista was less than perfect. In fact, nobody liked it. It's why Microsoft had a hard time selling it.

The author then states that Windows 7 is a “pretty convenient OS in general...” Well, thank goodness for that. I mean, I'd sure hate to get an operating system that wasn't convenient. It suggests that Windows 7 is not actually convenient, but at least it's “pretty” convenient.... less than perfect. The author then supports this view by adding in clear, concise wording: “but it's by no means perfect.” Why isn't it perfect this time? Could it be because it's not convenient?

Aparently it's more than that, because the author says the downloads he's recommending in his article will make it easier (because it isn't convenient), safer (apparently, once again, it isn't safe to use), and easy to upgrade to, because apparently it's not easy to upgrade to without help.

So therefore helpful folks have written some programs you need to download right away, 10 of them at least, that will fix Windows 7 and make it something you might want to have on your computer in the first place!

Is that really what I'm hearing from all this hyperbole about Windows 7?

It sounds more like a reason people need to navigate away from Microsoft and install Linux, as I've done on my computer, or buy a Mac.

Can Windows 7 Catch up to KDE?

Marketing Hype, Actual Features

The following article was originally posted on Linux Planet, which is an excellent website for Linux and Open Source Software news.

As a devoted free software user, I'm almost as likely to stick my hand down a running garbarator as buy a copy of Windows 7. In fact, so far, I haven't tried Windows 7. But if its features list is any indication, I'm missing little that I don't already have with the latest version of the KDE desktop.

Of course, exactly what Windows 7's new features are can be difficult to tell. The features list is as much a marketing document as a technical one. In places it's more apt to give you an overdose of adjectives than any specifics. Nor is every feature available in every edition of Windows 7.

Then, too, a few listed features, such as 64-bit support, are so far from new that I wonder why they are mentioned.

Another difficulty is the sheer scope of the comparison. A desktop is a big place, and you can easily miss features because on one desktop they are part of a default installation and on another they are an option squirreled away beneath several layers of menus.

Still, when such matters are taken into account, in terms of features, Windows 7 appears a minor upgrade at best. Judging from the advertising, it has no killer apps that outperform KDE, and its few unique features may turn out to be oddities rather than genuinely useful features.

Windows 7 bests KDE mainly in administrative tools, and even here the advantage is counter-balanced by standard features that KDE has had for years.

The most important feature that Windows 7 has and KDE lacks appears to be BitLocker, a utility for driver encryption. By contrast, while a feature for directory encryption is just being introduced in an unpolished form in Ubuntu, so far, no corresponding tool is standard with most distributions, let alone with KDE.

Otherwise, the difference on the desktop is slim. In fact in many cases, Windows 7 is just catching up to KDE.

Translucencies? Animations? Thumbnail previews of applications on the taskbar? KDE already has them, although Windows 7 does add to the usability of previews by allowing you to view them full-screen.

The same goes for widgets -- or gadgets, as Windows 7 calls them. The feature lists boasts that these minor utilities are no longer confined to a taskbar and can now be placed anywhere on the desktop, but that's old news to KDE users.

Ditto for running applications from the taskbar. As for measurement conversions, the only difference is that KDE has been doing them in KRunner and Windows 7 does them in its calculator.

Move on to applications, and in many cases Windows 7 is still behind. Why would anyone consider the clutter of Windows Media Player when they could use the rich feature sets of Amarok or Digikam? Windows Media Player would have to be utterly transformed to compete seriously against applications that are the ultimate in their categories.

And use Internet Explorer instead of Firefox? Whether you are talking in terms of native features or the ecosystems of extensions built around them, Internet Explorer is barely in the running, especially if you want to do things exactly your way.

Admittedly, much is being made in Windows 7 reviews of Aero Peek, Aero Shake, and Snap.

Yet, despite all the attention they are receiving, these sound like small features: Peek turns all open windows translucent, so that you can see the desktop, while with Shake you can jiggle the mouse to make all except the active window disappear. Yet another solution for desktop chaos is embodied in Snap, which allows you to drag windows to the edges of the desktop to resize and position them.

While such features may astonish Windows users, for KDE users, these are only specific implementations of features that they already know -- translucencies, mouse gestures and hot spots on the edges.

The features may not be available for exactly the same purposes as in Windows 7, but they are recognizably the same technology -- for instance, you can make a window translucent as you move it to see what is beneath.

Nor are they the only ways to move and organize windows, as browsing through the wealth of settings in KDE's Windows Behavior settings soon proves. You might very well be better able to organize your desktop just as effectively without Peek, Shake, or Snap.

I suspect, too, that Shake and Snap in particular are going to alarm users who move the mouse in a careless moment and see their open windows disappear or change size. But even if that is not so, the point is that Windows 7 is advertising nothing on the desktop that KDE either does not have or could not easily add if anyone cared to make the effort.

In some cases, such as wireless connections, Windows 7 and KDE offer almost identical tools. Still, there is no denying that, compared to earlier releases, the KDE 4.x series is still light in administration tools. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that Windows 7 has parental controls and location-specific printing, but KDE does not seem to be even working on parental controls, and is scheduled to introduce geolocation features over the next couple of releases.

My Passions in Life and Why Linux Can Save the World

People have different passions in life. My passions are the Linux/GNU Operating System (hereafter simply referred to as Linux), alternative energy, writing, and creative photography. I also own a Honda Goldwing motorcycle, but I'm not passionate about motorcycles – I just like mine.

When I say I'm passionate about Linux, don't mistake me for a computer expert. I'm not. I'm just an end user of operating systems, but I'm not dumb either. As an independent thinker, it appears to me Microsoft has been developing a pretty faulty operating system with a lot of problems they can't seem to fix, even with the advent of Windows 7. You still have a lot of security problems, virus problems, squash the competition and see if you can get away with it problems, and world domination issues that come with Microsoft as a company and Windows as an OS. On the other hand you have the Apple Computer side of things, and they seem to make a superior product which is largely problem free, secure and for the most part too expensive to own.

Therefore you have Apple running TV ads that point out the flaws in Windows 7 and Microsoft running TV ads that point out you can get a system for less money if you go with Windows and not Mac.

In between you have a pesky little problem for both Microsoft and Apple, namely the free operating systems that are lurking out there and which are getting better all the time. These include FreeBSD, Linux, BeOS, and OpenSolaris, at the risk of leaving out a bunch of others. Debates rage about which one of those free ones are the best, but I don't have any way to compare except if it's easy to install and allows me to do what I want to do with my computer. Some of the free operating systems out there accomplish this very well.

Others do not.

Even a recent attempt at installing FreeBSD on my home computer failed to give me a workable system right out of the box. I had the same problem with OpenSolaris and some flavors of Linux.

My best luck lately has been with Linux Mint and Ubuntu, both of which are flavors (called distributions) of the Linux operating system. I presently run Ubuntu Linux and am satisfied with it. I wish you'd try it too. (Google for Ubuntu or Linuxmint.) Either of these are not difficult to install and will work immediately on your computer without any hassle. They both come bundled with a host of free software at your disposal.

Getting rid of Windows and installing Linux will save you a bunch of money. I would even request for you to have conviction: if you can't get an application you like to run on Linux, don't use it. This will force the companies that write those programs to get it together or go out of business. There are many alternatives to the programs you are used to that do the same job or better under Linux, and they are free. It will really create a price war to our benefit.

Honestly, I believe the world would be a better place if everyone and their mother switched over to Linux. In fact, it's what I run on my computer at home, yet here I am writing this article, posting to the Internet, doing email, instant messaging, playing games, and watching DVDs and YouTube videos. I can virtually do anything I might like to do on my computer. All without Microsoft Windows.

Of course, Microsoft and Apple would be very unhappy if everyone switched to Linux, but many people do switch over every day. In today's market people seek value. An operating system that is as secure and works as effectively as Linux and is furthermore free, is a pretty good value. But because it's free, nobody advertises on TV and all you see is Mac and Microsoft going at it for world domination of computers.

People have heard of Linux these days, but not as many people download it and install it for free as they should. That's why it's not seen on computers as often as Windows or Mac OS. You certainly won't hear about it from Apple or Microsoft, because if everyone switched over they would have serious financial problems. They would probably survive making applications that run under Linux, but that's their problem, and your problem if you own their company stock.

Therefore, it can be safely said, Microsoft and Apple are not out for our best interest as far as computer advances are concerned. If a superior product like Linux comes along which is better for the world, then they could not support it because it would have serious fiancial implications for the survival of their multi-billion dollar corporations. Therefore they have an “ignore Linux” policy and would rather mention each other in their TV advertisements than mention the word “Linux.”

Microsoft has many fine products, but the operating system they market is broken and it can't be fixed. Anyone who owns a Windows computer knows how easy it is to catch spyware, maleware, viruses, worms, unwanted cookies and have a computer registry that's so cluttered it takes your computer five times longer to boot up. If you're grandma or grandpa, you just live with it. If you're in the know, you install all kinds of other software that helps correct some of these issues that the operating system should have corrected in the first place. Or one of those viruses you didn't know you had wipes out your hard disk.

Like many folks, I've worked with every version of Windows, and before that, MSDOS, that ever came out. I'm a recovering Windows-holic, and now that I have a computer that is running Linux, I hate Windows with a passion.

I honestly believe the world would be better if everyone in the world switched to Linux, including governments. Linux is a giving community. You have a problem, you can participate in making a bug report, and/or ask on Linux forums how to solve the problem. Someone will help you.

Clearly this can save the world.

Suppose, for example, an evil dictator type guy in some country installs Linux on his laptop because he wants the best of everything and he heard Linux was best. Later down the line he has some kind of problem and he posts a bug report and asks around on some Linux Forums for a solution. Somebody gives him the information he needs, and the evil dictator type guy is happy. He thinks, hey these open source Linux type people are nice folks. Maybe evil is bad and good is good. I will give up being evil.

See? Linux saves the world.

All that may sound very tongue in cheek, but in reality if everyone in the world really did switch to Linux, it might go a long way to making a diversified world community. Such a community would consist of different nationalities cooperating and communicating peacefully with each other and thus end the need for wars. That's how important your operating system is.

That's one of my passions. Politically I voted for Obama. Whether or not history will applaud him or scorn him will be known to us in time, but politics is just not my passion.

However, another passion is alternative energy. One day I'd like an electric car. I have some solar panels and a small vertical access wind turbine in my yard that trickle charges a large, industrial deep cycle battery. The battery in turn both operates an inverter so I can run 110 volt power tools in my shed as well as a 12 volt lighting system. Soon I plan to add more solar panels to the system.

I love writing, and enjoyed writing this blurb. I wrote a novel awaiting to be published, called Time Gods. For that I have a website called TimeGods.com.

Finally, I am in love with the art form called photography and digital enhancement of high resolution images, and for that I have a website called ePhotoMagic.com.

The reason for the existence of this website originally was to put up photos that Shelly and I took of our 2005 Motorcycle trip out west.

Over time the website has evolved and changed appearance quite a few times until the latest incarnation you are viewing at this time. But the photo tours, including the 2005 Motorcycle Trip out west, disappeared for technical reasons (I couldn't figure out how to get them in my MySQL database).

Problem solved, I'm now gradually re-posting some of my past photo tours, and you can see them on the navigation menu to the left.