Tech of yesterday today

I recently had the absolute honor of working on the Life Church Christmas production as a lighting designer with another guy who sadly I have forgotten the name of. Anyway the lights were amazing and everything (as I should have hoped they would be) though the night after I realized that I had just done something that when I was younger I thought was out of my reach now that was not being in charge of lights for a show but it was that I used a console with a touch screen, now yes I know I use touch screens every day but that's not the point I was using a touch screen to make something work. I can only think of the LCARS panels in star trek that when I was little I always wanted one because they were so cool. I had fulfilled a childhood dream of 'driving' something with a piece of equipment using touch screens.

Now I can imagine most people would have had similar experiences of commonly using tech that 15 years ago was absolutely impossible. think back and smile about how far we have come.

DFTBA 

The human spirit

First off I would like to say I am writing this post in dedication to a man I admire who has recently been diagnosed with cancer as much as it saddens me to hear that news I find it hard to feel bad for him or feel down about it. Why? Not because I don't care or anything like that but because his attitude to the whole situation is just incredible in fact I would go so far as to call it admirable. So big ups James Eggers.

Now down to my intended post subject, well this is not exactly much of a hey this is the universe kind of posts this is look at the world around you and have a think about it.

Over the last year I have gone through a major natural disaster in my city now I know that sounds crazy and to be quite honest it seems crazy to me to be writing it though to be frank that really is the reality of it. Though through the disaster the thing that struck me the most was not something physical or tangible it was the way people reacted to the whole situation, I did not once find a person who took up the 'O woe is me' perspective on the situation. Now I do not go as far to say that there were not those people however the overwhelming majority of the people I met were very positive for people who some had lost much of their livelihood, in fact probably my favorite memory of the days surrounding the quake and the resulting cleanup was a family that had decided that cleaning up their section was good reason to throw a party. Now if that is not celebrating the little things then I have no idea what is.

Now if your wondering what the overall point of this blog is then well it's simply this. When life is bad don't bring others down or yourself just celebrate the little things and let others help you up.

DFTBA

Seeing into the past

Have you ever thought about what's going on on the sun right at this very moment? Well fact is very few people do think about it it's a rather odd idea really to think about the sun other than the concept of 'is it sunny?' we tend to think of it as a constant bright ball in the sky that gives us heat and warmth. Yet the reality is its not as placid as you think. It's about as relaxed as a stroll though a lake of fire with no protective footwear while you get showered with hydrochloric acid. Now the issue with this is that there are things called solar storms, what are solar storms? Well they are storms on the chromosphere that cause the expulsion of electromagnetic radiation that is not only harmful to humans but also can knock out the entire electronic world throgh a electromagnetic pulse far more powerful than that caused by a nuclear detonation. The main issue with this is that there is no way to predict one of these storms. Even if we had a satellite positioned in orbit around the sun monitoring the suns activity the data would come to us after the radiation had already hit us because the electromagnetic radiation travels at the speed of light so with processing times we would know after we had observed it. So in that way we. Can only see the past and this effect gets more pronounced the further away you look.

So when you look up at the sky either at the stars or the sun remember that's not what's happening right now.

So remember nothing is quite what it seems.

DFTBA

Is it there or is it not?

Ok here is where it gets complicated this post is about my musings on the quantum world. First off I would like to stress I am in no way an expert on these subjects I am merely a hobby studier.

Anyway a couple of weeks ago someone asked me if there was a way round the shrodingers Cat experiment. The fact is there is no way to know wether the cat is alive or dead without observing it in one way or another, however in this instance saying observed to me leaves to many holes. Basically as soon as you find put what state the cat is in the superposition breaks down into only one state. Ok I know it's hard to imagine so honestly don't try and imagine the inside of the box it just breaks your mind because nothing can both exist and not exist at the same time. People often tell me quantum states don't exist, if your thinking that then your kinda right they don't exist as long as we are observing them at all other times they do. Still mind blown? Yea well just wait till the next paragraph.

Ok now is the time for me to tell you something that changed the way I understood the world. You ready? No? Well to bad, ok here goes.
Every atom is everywhere and nowhere in the universe until it's observed by something or someone. It makes my world seem so tied into something or someone at such a basic level that to me nothing can justify then universe quite right. Well that's where quantum conciseness comes into play. However I'll get to that later.

Time

Time is a awesome and annoying thing really isn't it, we never really seem to have enough of it. Also it seems to be a resource since we can spend time and waste time. Though to be completely honest that is not really want to talk about (why do I write talk when I am writing about things?).

What I want to talk about Time as in the dimension there are varying ways in witch people explain  how we see time in every day life some people explain it our temporal perception as being like watching a parade through a keyhole that you can only see a small part of it at any moment, others explain it as if you were walking down a hallway that it pitch black and the lights only turn on behind you making it impossible to see where you are going but its easy to see what there was behind you. both of these are good ways of explaining it the only issue is that they only really tell half the story.

the way I see time is that it is like drifting down a river in a inner tube from a tire at night we can only see things where we are and we cant stop moving because of the current. Now I know what all you clever people are thinking now, 'but James what about the laws of relativity?' well ok I will admit that's a flaw in the explanation but to be honest that is not what the explanation is about, its about how we perceive time not the actuality of our temporal existence witch can be easily effected by gravity and speed and the like. Why can our actual temporal velocity change? what is temporal velocity? you may want to know temporal velocity is the rate that time changes in relation to a fixed time point it can also be measured by measuring the quantity of change between two identical clocks. there is a whole lot of math involved in calculating the exact deviat between the two clocks.

Any of this can be calculated by some rather complex math though I don't really understand the math so I cant really go into it. Though I can tell you that relativity has been proven by putting two identical atomic clocks one in a 747 and another on the ground and when they flew the 747 fast for a while (I cant remember the exact details of the experiment) however they found when they checked the clocks the one from the 747 was slightly behind the one that had been on the ground. Now here is something I bet most of you have never considered just by going about our lives and walking around, driving, flying whatever you do to move is actually slowing your personal time so we actually move out of sync all the time compared to each other however never enough for anyone to ever notice.

I know that may have been hard to take in so I am going to break this up into a few more parts.

Fellow time travelers I bid you farewell until another post has come into our local temporal existence. (it already exists)

Speed kills

'Speed kills, slow down' many times have I heard this being thrown at us as a people in reference to our cars and that speeding puts us all at greater risk. This is true but the statement rings untrue to someone who knows what really kills in crashes. What kills people in car crashes is stopping quickly, newtons law ( 'an object will keep moving in one direction until stopped' ) is what kills people. Think about it if your moving at 100kph you have a fairly large amount of energy if you crash into a brick wall you stop very quickly and (if you have one on) your seatbelt stops you making a dramatic exit from life, the issue is that everything inside you wants to keep moving forward this somewhat poses some problems for the delicate organs inside you often ending in damage. Just to prove further that stopping is the problem not going faster think about now fast we are going to start with let me list a few things that affect our speed. ( assuming that we could have a fixed point in space-time to calculate our speed from) We have our global rotation, speed of orbit around the sun, ok yea pretty basic and now the slightly insane part, on top of those two we have our solar systems orbit around the galaxy then we have the galaxy's movement in relation to the other galaxy's and finally the total universal migration to the 'dead spot' of space and lastly general universal expansion rate. They all add up (and occasionally subtract) to the total speed. So saying speed kills is generally wrong but I guess it sounds better than 'stopping kills so don't crash' DFTBA

One year on

This being the 4th of September everything I see is tinted in the memory of fear from a 7.1 earthquake and not knowing what was going to happen. That has of course taught me a valuable lesson that being that hey life could be worse I have lived through the year I never considered.

So what have I learned that I can teach you all?

Never ever underestimate the human spirit I have spoken to people who pulled friends out of rubble, lost houses, lost friends and family and seen death in front of them. Myself I discovered that even when at what I had deemed the limit of my ability to stay and fight for my friends and help them I could take so many more emotional hits and keep going.

I apologize if this is to much emotional blabbering for you, however if you think about it when your world is shaken and torn down and you experience the true fear of death it's hard not to get emotional. The thing that got me through it was relationship with people when people bind together it's amazing and it turns darkness into something bearable.

As a final word to those who have never experienced anything like what myself and my fellow Christchurch citizens, value your friends more and remember your life and theirs can be taken at any moment don't live for tomorrow because nothing is ever certain your life can be taken instantly. In closing do not forget your mortality EVER.

(written on the 4th of September)

Hear the pressure

Sound

I am writing this in my room while listening to some music, sound is something that has always interested me from its method of production to its reproduction to audio capture to storing audio all the way down to how we hear.

what is sound? sound is simply a pressure wave a simple transference of energy from the thing that generates the energy to the things. Imagine someone jumping into a swimming pool and how the waves travel outward from the impact of the person hitting the water that is a wave of energy travelling through the water. Now imagine a explosion (a big one) now the shock wave from the explosion is actually a sound be it a loud one its exactly the same thing, simply a pressure wave in a medium.

So what your hearing when you listen to music is ripples in the air these ripples then travel into your ear and get turned into a signal that your brain translates into something you can understand its all rather clever and complicated.

Sound recording and reproduction are also rather amazing to record a sound you need something to pick up the sound, way back in the day when the record was being invented it was a needle on a a material and the vibrations in the air were mirrored onto the material as it turned so when the process was reversed the audio imprint was converted back into audio. want proof of how simple it is? find a old record player with a working needle and and a record and place the needle into the grooves and spin the record without the player plugged in and you will be able to hear the audio just off the needle from its vibrations picked up off the disk. Think thats cool but old? well let me tell you CD's are actually just a digital version of a record it uses the same idea but it picks up the pits in the disk to read the data on the disk then gets processed and run through a amp so you can hear the audio.

I guess also you would like to hear things loud? this is the fun part, run a audio signal through an amp wich simply makes the electrical signal bigger then sends them to a speaker that is made of essentially three parts a coil a magnet and a diaphragm (the diaphragm is the part you can see). The signal is  from the amp is run into the coil that generates a magnetic field that acts on the magnet placed on the back of the diaphragm that then vibrates with with the electrical field.

OK well that's my again watered down explanation of the subject, sound is something that is around us every day and with nearly everyone listening to music every day I think people never stop and think about what sound really is we are only listening the pressure waves in the air. Whats my point? well my point is to show you that there is more in the world than you may have thought about before there is always that one step below what you can see, I encourage you all to take off the worlds cover and have a look at the inner workings and be amazed at what you find.

DFTBA

Snow

well well well look ice is falling on the ground and settling. I find it cool (excuse the pun) but mostly on the level of 'hey dude everything is white' other wise its just cold and inconvenient, this leads me to wonder what is it about snow that excites people? Is it the fact that it is somewhat rare or is it the somewhat romantic idea of snow and snowflakes?

The other reasons snow makes me excited to me its sort of a combination of what snow is and what its useful for. I know this may sound boring but to me I find snow cool (again excuse the pun) is that it is a very complex structure made out of water crystals each one being slightly different to another. hey even if your not science you have got to admit that its kinda cool. What is snow useful for? well really come on do I really need to point this out? its a relatively inexpensive creative medium for the creation of representations of people who rather admire the pie and have since converted to a more spherical existence. Also it is a good way of sorting out disputes between friends and family through the application of frozen projectiles.

Or you could just make snow men and have snow ball fights.

I guess the other thing I find fascinating about snow is its ability to bring people together in such a light hearted manor through a simple shared experience. If the world needs anything its just that.

So bring on the snow

DFTBA

Our brains are awesome

Ok so the fact that our brains are awesome is pretty well known so I just wanna touch one thing. Think about txting, I know it's not exactly a brain taxing activity however think about it you txt on top of many other tasks. I tend to think of our multitasking ability sort of similar to the iOS multitasking, it's not really running everything at the same time it only makes it seem like it by saving the programs state then closes that task, then opens the next one. With this similarity think about how you txt, you pause the task your doing and then txt yet we somehow remember almost every separate conversation and continue it then go back to our previous task. This may not sound like an amazing thing but you do this without even trying. The human is very clever without you even noticing. And that's just a simple thing it does. A mere memory operation. Think about everything else it does, it's a clever grey blob so take care of it.


DFTBA

Inside the dodecahedron

Ok the title may seem unusual, the fact is it's named after my favorite theory on the universe, that being that the universe's outer limit is a dodecahedron. If you are not sure what that is it's basicly a football. The title is also the same as the blog title the reason is I was originally thinking of calling it inside the box, but lets face it boxes are kinda boring and are made out if the most unimaginative shape so yea that explains that.

Why base the title off a Possible shape of the universe? Well simple if I think inside the universe thats outside the box but also gives me some form of limit. Not a very useful limit I will admit but a limit none the less.

Anyway onto the more normalish stuff, I made this blog to share my random wonderings and perspectives on well life the universe and everything. So yea I hope you find it moderately interesting or more interesting than moderate.

DFTBA

P.S blog posts will get longer as I get used to this and the page is a work in progress