Smart.

Google is releasing The Next Big Thing, called "Glass."

The idea of wearable computers has been around for a while, but no one has really fielded a worthwhile model. (Oh, I know that Apple tried it, but this is completely different.)

IF this works (and eventually, someone will get it right), this will be a bigger deal than broadband was to the Internet.

Google is thus far kind of hit or miss on some new apps, and their branded hardware has never set a benchmark, to my knowledge. But this is a new device that hasn't really been fielded before, and their marketing strategy is pretty smart.

See, you have to apply to get the right to pay $1500 for one, right now. That will of course change, later, but right now, your price of admission is a grand and a half, and an application that includes an essay, and perhaps a video.

Why? Because genius, that's why.

They're beta testing. You want your beta testers to be invested in the product, or they'll put it down without input.They must have some confidence in it, to be trying this. But maybe some design guy sold it to marketing with:
"Hey, we can't fail! We get to claim that we're beta-testing, not generally releasing the product, and each enduser is paying us to do the research. Worst case scenario is that it's back to the drawing board. Best case: we send a service pack module upgrade, and proceed with production as is."


The weak point isn't going to be the shaky video; it's going to be in the speech recognition. It needs to NOT fire off some app, just because you left it on while walking through a noisy crowd, or while watching a movie.To quote my friend Ed: "You know it's only a matter of time before people start using Google Glass to make their own pornos."
He's probably right, but there have been wearable cameras for a long time. I think that it's the integration that will be the big deal. Google is pretty good at taking existing technology, and integrating it. Look at the excellent job that they did with Google Maps integrating with their search engine, with their one-of-a-kind StreetView, and their superb Earth. (You haven't downloaded Google Earth to your machine? I don't even know you, anymore.)
 
Some worry that it moves us a little further down the slippery slope of not having to interact with human beings around us. I submit that it will pull our heads up. Right now, when I want to interact with the Internet, I sit down and face a computer screen, in a corner. I am effectively sequestering myself from the world.  Something like this could permit the easy give and take of data, while out and about.

In a year, we'll know if this one took or not.  Given the proliferation of 4G smart phones out there (with which it will pair), I reckon that it's got a fighting chance. Eventually, someone will get us there.

Django: Hot Tub Time Machine.

My wife and I went to see Django Unchained last night. We liked Christoph Waltz. It took me forever to realize that I was looking at Samuel L. Jackson. Don Johnson added comedy that was the best part of the movie. I think that Jamie Foxx did okay with what he was told to work with. Not great, but okay.

But we didn't like it. First, the movie was WAY too long. 2:45 long. Every scene involved long, lingering camera pans that were unnecessary. I'm a Tarantino fan, but someone needs to edit the crap out of his stuff. Also, there was a logical ending, and yet the movie went on for another 15 minutes that should have been added in the director's cut DVD. Next, I get that Tarantino was trying to do a movie in the old spaghetti western-style (as even the name would tend to indicate), with a strong Peckinpah influence, but it really was over the top. Every single .36 caliber ball out of a Remington 1858 New Army or a Colt 1851 Navy revolver would cause sheets of blood to fly out of the recipient, coating the walls with blood.

And about those guns. The first gun we see in the movie is a double-barreled shotgun which was in keeping with the time, but is at the end of that scene referred to as a "rifle." The movie is set in 1858, and apparently Remington must have shipped cases and cases of their new revolvers down to Texas, Tennessee, and Mississippi for general distribution to every dirt farmer that year. These were very expensive pistols, and poor folk generally didn't have them. This would be like finding every convenience store clerk, gas station attendant, and parking lot attendant having a brand new HK or Springfield model fresh from SHOT, now. While not impossible, it's highly unlikely.

 There was a Colt Dragoon (Model 1848) visible, but it didn't play a big roll. We saw a pretty cool Remington Cattleman's Carbine (model of 1858), which would have been pretty damned rare to see.  The main character rides hard with it in his hand, but I don't recall him ever shooting it, even when he ambushes some baddies.

The rest of the guns were almost universally anachronistic. The derringer shown again and again was a modern replica of a Remington 1866 .41 rimfire tip-up derringer. I've fired a couple of dozen rounds out of one (using up a sizable portion of the world's supply of .41 rimfire at the time, too, I guess), and the round is anemic. If you shoot it at a hardwood tree, there's a decent chance that it will bounce back at you. It of course caused gouts of blood in this movie. Why not? It was being portrayed 8 years early. Anything could happen.

There was a Sharps rifle that played a significant role. They never showed him loading metallic cartridges into it, but it wasn't the slanting breech model of 1852. I don't know the 1848 model. I think that this was an 1859 rifle, and much of the movie took place in 1859.  The rich bounty hunter might have had newest kit. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on that one.

There's an iron-framed Henry that's a year or two too early.

We didn't mind the cussing. People cussed, then as now. Anyone who is offended by the use of the "N word" while complicit with the depiction of slavery by those uttering it is a confusing individual. There is reference to a gladiator-style culture of buying and selling slaves for the sole purpose of pitting them against each other for fighting, which is referred to as "Mandingo* fighting" in the movie.  My wife was surprised to hear me say after the movie that I'd never heard of such thing being popular. Oh, I've little doubt that it happened (Humans have always had a capacity for cruelty. And dogfighting has always been popular. So I'm sure that at times slave owners pit their laborers against each other.), but I've just never read of or prior to now heard of a real culture of slave fighting in the American South. Apparently, Tarantino just lifted the idea from a blacksploitation movie of the 1970's called Mandingo. He knows it's fiction.

The fact that this flick is a black man's fantasy about killing white slave owners doesn't bother me, any more than do the myriad of movies about getting revenge on the commies/men who murdered my family/enemy nation that attacked our country/etc, etc.

In an interesting reversal of movie styles, at no point is there any female nudity (beyond showing bare backs), yet there is a scene involving Jamie Foxx's taint, and his phallus. But that's not why the movie sucked.
_________________________________________________
*A few years ago, I helped out on a case involving a hebephile who had met his male victim online, using the name "Mandingo." I had at the time thought it strange to use such a nickname, but had not researched it. Apparently, there is a porn star (whom I won't link here, but can be found on a specialty database site for adult film stars) who goes by that name, and is also black. I don't think that the suspect was considering himself a fighter, but rather was identifying with the black porn star. He pled out.

House Party XLIV

I turned in a request for 24 hours off this weekend, to burn some of the 400 hours of vacation and 80 hours worth of holiday time. I feel bad about having another guy work for me, but it's use it or lose it, y'know? Then too, there's the issue of where I went, and why.

Phlegmmy threw a bit of a shindig at her house for our beloved LawDog.

The food was rich and very plentiful. There was a case of Nerd Beer for LawDog (written on the side: "LawDog's! No Fraudulatin'!") And a case of Nerd Beer for the rest of us rabble.("Fraudulate all you want.")

The stories were thick and well-told. The weather, on Saturday evening, was shirt-sleeve-worthy. Christina, Vine, Old NFO, FarmGirl, Jennifer and EvylRobot, me and my wife, Phlegmmy, LawDog, Ambulance Driver, my dad and his bride, and others all chatted freely.

Old NFO (whom I cannot believe was not linked here. What the heck?!? My shame is boundless. I had him on my Favorites that I would click directly to him on my browser. Fixed.) handed me a couple of interesting pistols. There were grins when I double-checked each pistol before handling it. Apparently, this was something of a theme of the evening: EVERYONE multichecked each gun before handling. If only it were understood how common that action is among responsible gunfolk. I don't mean to say that it's absent-minded. I just mean to say that, when handed a firearm, I have the sudden urge to check the status of that gun that is as strong as the urge to pee after having a triple-iced-tea lunch.

Old NFO handed me a like-new S&W 637 that he's been talking about just flat giving me. I could not possibly accept such a generous gift without recompensing him with something, yet I couldn't afford to give him what it was worth. He kindly accepted a promise of a mere pittance from me. I later found out that Dad and Holly covered half of that! My heavens, but the generosity of the friends and family around me is amazing. Thank y'all. More on that gun in a later post.

EvylRobot brought his home-roasted coffee, which I incorrectly declared to be too darkly roasted, but which LawDog used his fancier French press to produce utterly superb coffee from. I restrained myself to only about 25 cups of that coffee. We reloaded the french press approximately 20 times during the weekend. Note to self: trust EvylRobot.

Ambulance Driver had called me earlier and asked if I wanted to go in with him on a nifty gift to LawDog: a signed first edition of Elmer Keith's hardcover book "Hell, I Was There!" I kicked in along with others (I'm sorry; I've forgotten), but this was all AD's idea.

My own meager contribution was a fair bit of good loose tea for LawDog, and some muslin bags to make teabags with on the run, and a couple of bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon for the the house, to belatedly celebrate Phlegmmy's housewarming.

As the air chilled and the hour got late, several of us retired to a very nice inn that was just two blocks away from Phlegmmy's house, and found our underpriced quarters to be very pleasant. We planned on going shooting in the morning after breakfast.

Come morning, a front had moved in. Shooting just didn't sound that fun. We broke our fast at a joint with heavy smoke coming from the barbecue pit. Note: ALWAYS choose the smoked meats at such a place. We camped at our tables until lunchtime, then moved back to the house, where we hung out into the Sunday evening. Phlegmmy fed us yet again with a very rich dish, of which I was only able to get two or three bowls* down.

I was glad to introduce my own wife to some people she had not met before, part of the tribe that I've become part of. She, ever the introvert, said little. She said she liked it.

LawDog, an introvert his ownself, was at home. He was among people that had come a fair distance to see him because they love him. He was at his home, with a lovely lady who admires and revels in him. I've seen the 'Dog stressed, and I've seen him happy. I don't think I'm speaking out of turn to suggest that he was happy, this weekend.

I hope my own 44th birthday is as good and filled with good cheer.

Happy birthday, friend.





_______________________
*Large bowls.

Things to come: Building To Existing Structure Is Hard.

When I was a ranch hand for my 17th summer, a large portion of my job was helping an alcoholic carpenter (and by "help," we mean, keep him sober and working) to build out an existing small 700 square foot hunting shack into a rambling 2500 square foot house with an upstairs and a patio. We kept it in the original theme of cedar, with corrugated steel roofing.

A problem was, that a shack that's been standing for 50+ years will pretty much never be square to anything. Wood warps. Ground shifts. Carpenters who thought that they were just building for a humble one-room building had no idea that this would become the great room (central living room) off of which the rest of a rather nice rustic show-home would be built. And did you catch that it stood in the middle, so that we had to build out away from it, in multiple directions?

In the end, it would have been a LOT easier just to have demolished the original structure, and started over. But we didn't. We radiused out our squares to obtuse and acute angles. We checked every abutment with a plumb bob and a protractor before cutting.

That's what I'm doing now, to fit a story of my own, built out of several experiences, to a story of Ambulance Driver's, again.

Stay tuned.

Great! When do I get some? Sign me up!

Some Dutch boffins are making inroads into a fuggetaboutit pill. They claim that they can make painful memories disappear.

The most hopeful use for this is for sufferers of PTSS, including victims of terrible crimes.

Me, I just want to erase the terrible marks left on my psyche when Mary Beth Rottencrotch turned me down to the high school dance, and that time I bought a procedural in a tactical match for shooting to slide lock, and dumping a mag with rounds remaining during what should have been a tac reload.

Ouch!

TEASER: Blogging on a theme.

This Friday, May 30th, a few of us are going to try something a little different.

Not really a collaboration.

More of a confederation, blogging on a theme.

Atomic Nerds, LawDog, Ambo Driver, Marko, Tam, and yours truly will provide different takes on the same tired old inspired new theme.

I picked the theme this week. Next time? Someone else.

So check your star calenders for Friday, and see what posts are here. Or there.

Now you're on the incentive program, eh?

According to SiteMeter's crack staff of statistical analysis boffins, this blog is due to blow through the 100 thousand hits mark in about five to seven days.

Let's look at that number: 100,000.00

Okay, so the insignificant last two digits are actually completely gratuitous.

And when I think of how certain other rockstar bloggers got to 100k so much faster than this little scribblings did, I feel kind of silly even marking the event.

But mark it I will. The visitor who achieves my 100 thousandth hit will get to choose the topic of my very next blog entry.

Watch This Space

Friends, Romans, Countryman, Gentle Readers:



I know I've been remiss. Here I've got the best and most loyal readership this blog's ever had:

...and I'm lettin' you down on content.

But never fear, Sweet Clean Good Strong Gentle Reader-- I've got Content with a capital K coming up!

I've got snark on shootings.

I've got denials of misogyny.

I've got a rebuild of an old derisive post on dumb pistol marketing ideas.

All this and more!

--Right after I finish my damned Research Methods test.

Stay tuned and remember: Keep Watching The Skies!

Avoiding real content.

Going to go shoot a pistol/carbine match with Dad.

Hey, it beats working.

Nothing else for you today. You come back tomorrow.

I have a post rattling around in my head about the Texas Castle Doctrine. But get ready: it's not completely lauditory.