2018: Day 61 the one with some snacks and a day off
Word count 142,413 + 3,005 or 145,418 of 1,000,000
Dear Reader,
Amazon appears to have included Andromeda (2000) with my Prime membership. That is really good news. I had pulled out the DVD box set and was getting ready to insert and remove season one disc by disc throughout the day. It will be a lot easier to stream the content in HD vs. watching the old standard digital video discs. Apparently seasons 1 to 5 are included with prime right now. My shopping list includes eventually buying Andromeda the complete series on blu-ray. You might be surprised to know that streaming Andromeda is really very exciting. Watching the show is pretty much a guilty pleasure. This morning I have fed the dogs and had my Cafe Coffiest Soylent meal replacement drink. Now I’m sitting down to write for an hour. Right now Captain Pickles is laying down under my desk. The window blinds are open and the dog can see outside and lay on my feet at the same time. That is apparently the ideal option for a wild 10 month old puppy. I’m sure all that window gazing will soon be followed up by a nap.
The streaming video quality of Andromeda season 1 episode 1 from Amazon prime video is pretty decent. My connection supports a full 300 mbps down and 30 mbps up. I’m sure in a few years that will seem like a drop in the bucket. Right now it seems fast enough. Streaming true 4K video only requires about 80 mbps down. That means I should be able to stream whatever quality video Amazon has to offer. Right now Andromeda is streaming to the left half of my monitor and I’m writing in Google Docs on the right half of the screen. I was not really sold on this curved monitor. It is a Dell UltraSharp U3415W 34-Inch curved LED-Lit monitor. I acquired it back during the summer of 2016. Some of the newer ones are much bigger. Samsung is even making a 49 inch monitor. That thing would literally take up the majority of my desk. The newer version of the Dell one that is sitting on my desk is the Dell U3818DW 37.5″ Curved UltraSharp monitor with InfinityEdge display. Today it costs about as much as the 34 inch version did back in 2016. It looks pretty good and I’m sure it would be a decent addition to my desktop environment, but I do not really see the point at this time.
My next major monitor purchase will have to be to support whatever comes after 4K video content as a majority standard. It is pretty clear that 4K televisions are here to stay and that people are adopting that technology. The FCC has cleared the way for 4K over the air broadcasts and that is a pretty clear indication that the technology is going to be mainstream. We have been using our TiVo Roamio to watch high definition over the air broadcasts in some variant of 1080 resolution. We get a little bit of interference from time to time. Raising the single up to 4K probably will generate even more frame dropping and interference. Maybe the next generation of boxes will be able to handle dropped frames in a more graceful way. I’m wondering if television as we know it and even over the air broadcasts is going to fade away as people just shift to using smartphones and tablets. We may at some point see projectors or some other type of technology take over media presentation. I have looked at a ton of projectors over the years, but it never really seemed like the right time to buy a projector. Some of them are really small and compact.
Topic 1: Adding a 3rd GPU to my Storm Stryker case
My computer case has one more graphics card slot that could be selling hashing power to NiceHash. For one brief moment my Storm Stryker build had 3 graphics cards installed. One of them mechanically broke down and had to be returned. For some reason, I have not bought a new one to occupy that graphics card slow. Mining has been occuring and payments have been coming in every few days. My 100 day mining experiment would probably have been better with 3 graphics cards. It would have been more fun. The biggest factor that slowed everything down was and probably is the massive graphics card shortage going on within the marketplace. Visit any retail store and look for high end graphics cards. They are all pretty much sold out at this point. The massive wave of mining hobbyists and enthusiasts bought up all the graphics cards. You read that right market shortage occurs due to overwhelming demand. That shortage really accelerated within the value of bitcoin shot up last year.
I don’t really need another graphics card. That is perhaps the other reason that no other graphics card has been ordered. Surfing Newegg for NVIDIA graphics cards has been a daily activity for the last few weeks. My plan is to keep mining until the break even point on this current ASUS graphics card. That will probably take the entire 100 day mining period that was designated as the upper bound for this experiment. At some point very soon NVIDIA is going to announce a new generation of graphics cards. I’m hoping that announcement comes pretty soon. My new computer build will probably house 2 or 3 of whatever the new graphics card happens to be. You can check out the website for NVIDIA and they are sold out of all the gaming style graphics cards except the NVIDIA Titan V which is also like $2,999.00 and I’m sure awesome. That card must be really awesome to be so expensive. I have no idea why NVIDIA wanted to bring the joys of volta to a graphics card that is so very expensive. It is out of reach to most people who might want to buy it. Most people are not going to spend that much on an entire computer build vs. just one part of that build.
Topic 2: Cleaning up my office
Instead of sitting down and writing 3,000 words in one massive burst of writing all I want to do is clean up my office. Maybe I’ll compromise and write a little bit and clean a little bit. Either way Andromeda is streaming and things are moving along. All of the trash was taken out today. It was both trash and recycling day. My office is nowhere close to being clean. I watched some episodes of Andromeda and started to get pulled into knowing the fate of the systems commonwealth. Writing a huge number of words did not happen. I ended up running a couple of errands instead of writing. Maybe I should have focused on cleaning up my office.
I’m settling in to finish off my writing effort for the night. Right now it is 19:37 and this blog post is going live at 22:00 hours. That pretty much means that I have enough time to knock out another 2,000 words tonight assuming my motivation stays at a decent level. Tonight I am listening to an album from the band Coheed and Cambria. This one is a real throwback to 2003. You may have already guessed that I am listening to the album, “In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3.” It has been sometime since this album was something that captured my attention. The last time that Claudio Sanchez got to see me was at C2E2. That even was more more or less about graphic novels vs. albums from the band. At the moment, this album is holding up pretty well. I published a blog post about that wild day some time ago. That post if you were lucky enough to read it was mostly written at the airport. I have done a lot of writing at airports in Chicago. That is one of those places where I have spent a ton of time just sitting around. Last time I had some pretty decent popcorn in the terminal. I’m a fan of just regular popcorn vs. that mix of cheese and caramel corn they are always trying to sell people in and around Chicago.
Tonight my writing is going to need to focus in on some topic and get going at a much faster pace or 22:00 hours is going to come and go without my writing objectives being met. That is the problem with having lost my writing buffer. Everything that is written is pretty much running up against the publishing deadline. You would think that might motivate me and help me push forward at a faster pace. That is not really the case. My rate of inspiration is derived from other things. I would have to say at the moment that rate of inspiration is derived from purely illusive forces. My will to write needs to get kicked up a notch at the moment. I’m tired and that is slowing me down at the moment. That is a bad sign since we are about halfway to the goal for today.
Topic 3: Rounding out the night
At this rate I’m going to be listening to three Coheed and Cambria albums back to back tonight. That is probably an ok thing to do this evening. The month of March is off to a decent start. Things should stay on the tracks here and the is something to keep a certain amount of focus on maintaining. Focusing on a specific topic is not really happening at the moment. For some reason my mind does not want to dig into anything in detail. Neither an inquiry into the breadth of argument or the dept of argument seems to be on the table tonight. My focus appears to be on the feelling of the keyboard. On the act of writing and the fluid typing of keys. That is all about embracing and taking in the moment of the creation of long form prose. These thoughts at this moment right now are really the only thing in focus and receiving consideration. This moment here and now is at the forefront of my thoughts. Nothing else is really on my mind. This is one of those moments before clarity. It is a moment where nothing has grabbed hold of my attention.
This is the time when my thoughts and attention could be pulled in any direction. The only direction that I want to take is going to sleep. Tomorrow my big plans include getting a haircut and trying to level out the ceiling fan again. My last attempt was not successful. I guess we could take the time to focus in on my new Casper king sized pillow. It seems to work pretty well. It is much better than the pillow I had been using. That pillow was from a bargain bin at Costco. I assume it was a bargain or maybe I just like to think that the pillows in the bin where a bargain. They were about 10% the cost of a full price Casper king sized pillow. That is a big difference. I’m not sure if it would be wise to question if the new pillow is really 10 times better than the one from before. I took a benchmark of my sleep statistics from Fitbit and at the end of the month of March I should be able to compare my sleep quality and figure out if the new pillow was worth it. That type of analysis is totally warranted at this point to figure out the exact percentage difference in sleep quality.
We leave in amazing times when that type of analysis can be completed for fun. At least I will be getting some good usage out of my Fitbit Ionic watch. I do have to say that the Fitbit Ionic is way more comfortable than my old Fitbit Blaze. Overall, I have been alternating the watch from my right wrist to my left wrist a few times a week. That is really just about comfort and wanting to mix things up a little bit. Nobody has commented on my fitness watch. It seems like a lot of folks have Apple watches these days. You don’t really see any of the lesser smartwatches out and about in public. You see people with Fitbit trackers that really just bands. Those less expensive models are out and about in force. It seems like most folks that want a smartwatch bought an Apple watch. That is probably going to be the way of things for the next few years. I’m sure Apple engineers are busy at work trying to figure out how to ditch the mobile phone and replace it with a watch variant. That makes sense I guess. The technology keeps getting smaller and people are used to wearing a watch.
I’m still wondering about the future use cases for advanced wrist wear. Technology is going to keep changing until we reach a world with working nanites or biological circuits. That is probably something that will be very close to the exact intersection of technology and modernity. We are seeing some signs that an intersection is approaching rapidly. Things have been really advancing on the artificial intelligence front. Advancing to the point where code can be executed to write more code. That pretty much opens the door to a world of unique and interesting possibilities. That is something worth considering. My mind is still pretty clear of anything grabbing my attention. I’m mostly writing and producing words out of reflex at the moment.
Topic 4: Some thoughts on public discourse
It took about 2,000 words to get warmed up today. Right now I’m ready to write a complete treatise on the nature of public discourse. I’m tired and that is probably not going to happen. Perhaps some word economic thoughts on the subject may be enough to help spark a later essay on the subject. We have lost the type of discourse that should be occurring in the public square. People on social media are not intergetting baseball photos instead of having actual discussions of major political issues. One of the things that I strong dislike about the modern political party system is that people feel like they can just sign up and accept the arguments of the party. Things are complex. Our arguments about things should be complex as well. We just do not have the time for involved public discourse. My conversations with people are really pretty short. Even the really involved ones rarely last longer than an hour. My efforts to write long form prose are a lot more involved and complex than most conversations. I used to watch C-SPAN and read articles. Debate about major issues used to be more than two ships exchanging previously written remarks in the middle of the night.
We have to figure out a way to raise the level of public discourse in a meaningful way. The problem with that is that the previous methods of widespread discourse have fallen apart. Our social institutions that were built around mass communication are crumbling. Increasing our social networks are highly locked down and usually specialized. Even the best speech ever written and delivered would only reach a fraction of the people. Even our education foundations are no longer a common touchstone across all 50 states. Sometimes even asynchronous methods of communication are failing to generate any real traction toward reaching everybody. We have no real method to remind everybody to vote vs. creating a scenario for meaningful degree of public discourse.
Maybe it would be a good idea to write a paper about the best methods to grab the attention of the American people. The event with the most attention is a sporting event. People focus in on the game and the commercials. That one even is really the best shot advertisers have to catch the attention of the people. Even a powerful political speech would only engage a fraction of that audience. Even then the part of that audience that would care enough to internalize and respond to the speech would be highly limited. That is the nature of the challenge facing public discourse. People find it easier to fire off a bunch of messages on social media that fade away rapidly. The stream that is social media never stops. Content is created like an endless waterfall.
Dr. Nels Lindahl
Broomfield, Colorado
Written on my Storm Stryker PC and or my ASUS C101P using Google Docs
P.S. Tomorrow should be pretty interesting. I’m ready for the weekend. Today was almost the day that that my YouTube channel sprang back to life. A new video series that just focuses on daily chats with camera might be the way to go. I’m not exactly sure how my video series on artificial intelligence came to an end. It just sort of stopped. That probably has to do with how much of my time is now devoted to writing and producing blog content. At one point, I had thought about just transcribing my live streams and allowing them to a be a part of my word count for the day. That would be one method of moving forward. It does not feel like the right method. Something about that just feels like mixing mediums and trying to call it the same thing. Live streams are a lot different than writing a 3,000 word essay. It is probably easier to talk for 30 minutes vs. trying to just type for 30 minutes. That is one of those things that should not really be the case. Really sitting down and focusing in on writing is different. It should be a higher quality of discourse.
My plan right now is to wake up and write for an hour or so before getting a haircut. I’m really focused on making sure a morning writing session happens. I think that is an important part of the process required to stay on track. That is a key part of the processes right now. Staying on track is very important.
