Future Perfect

Bookmark It!

Social networking ... social bookmarks ... social tagging. Whatever. It's supposed to be the wave of the future, or at least the wave of the next few years (months?). Except for Technorati, whose tagging system and rationale I understand, I've mostly ignored the phenomenon. In the last few days, though, I've begun playing around with services such as del.icio.us and jots.

For what it's worth, here's my bookmarking page on del.icio.us: del.icio.us/stephensmith. And here's my similar page on jots: www.jots.com/users/stephensmith.

Technorati Tags:
tagging, social bookmarks, social networking, communities, tags, jots, delicious, networks, friends, circles, bookmarking, bookmarks

Search Stomper links:
social bookmarks
jots
myspace
technorati
social networks
friends
circles
social web sites
tags
commnity
networking
bookmarking
communities
furl
groups
internet phenomena

The Day My Mind Caught Fire

Val Guest recently died at the age of 94. The British film director made many films over a long career, but for me his fame and glory rest on one particular one: The Day the Earth Caught Fire.

Premiering in 1961, The Day the Earth Caught Fire is a science fiction drama in which secret, simultaneous nuclear detonations by the United States and the Soviet Union knock Earth off its axis and send it hurtling toward the sun as the world's weather turns chaotic. The doomsday drama is told through the characters of two Fleet Street reporters.

The Day the Earth Caught Fire brought Guest and co-writer Wolf Mankowitz the best British screenplay awards from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. U.S. President Kennedy even asked for his own copy and showed it to 200 foreign correspondents in Washington.

This movie was one of the pivotal ones--along with tons of science fiction novels and short stories from the 1950s and 1960s--that led to my love for the genre and also helped expand my mind to encompass both the promises and the dangers that the future held. (Another notable SF movie from the same director's hand is The Quatermass Xperiment.)

Thanks, Val.

Related links, via Search Stomper:

science fiction
movies
SF movies
Val Guest
cinema
The Day the Earth Caught Fire
popular culture
JFK
1960s
Sixties

Technorati Tags:
science fiction, movies, Sixties, 1960s, cinema, SF movies, pop culture, JFK, Kennedy, awards, honors, future, futurism, atomic weapons, atomic bombs, nuclear age, doomsday
deaths, obituaries, celebrities

Stomp Your Searches

Although Google, Yahoo and MSNSearch have nothing to fear from it, you might like to try out Search Stomper (www.SearchStomper.com), a new search engine with a nice look and an interesting way of presenting search results.

Technically, Search Stomper is a meta-search engine -- it draws upon the capabilities of existing search engines for its results. Nevertheless, you might like how it displays those results in a clean yet attractive manner, and especially the tabs -- one for web pages, one for images, one for local resources, one for products, one for news and even one for videos. (Personally, I find its ability to find videos and display them on their own results page to be one of the best features.)

For some examples of how it shows its results, take a look at how it handles several currently and recently hot search terms:

American Idol
Supermax Prison
Hubble Space Telescope
Stephen Colbert video
Jessica Alba
Karen Elson
Kentucky Derby
Larisa Oleynik
American Inventor
NBA
Osama Bin Laden
Cynthia Watros
Shakira
Kaavya Viswanathan
Chris Brown
Mother's Day
Ivanka Trump
Britney Spears
Axl Rose
Michelle Rodriguez
Pussycat Dolls
Hanso Foundation
America's Next Top Model
Hebrew Month
cute puppies
Paris Hilton
Stephen Colbert
Megan Fox
American Idol
soccer
Da Vinci Code
Jodie Marsh
Thefacebook
Survivor: Panama
Naruto
Pope Benedict XVI
Opus Dei
Oprah Winfrey

Technorati Tags for this post:
American Idol, prisons, Hubble Space Telescope, Stephen Colbert, impersonators, comics, comedians, comedy, celebrities, Jessica Alba, Karen Elson, Kentucky Derby, horses, horse racing, Larisa Oleynik, inventors, inventions, NBA, basketball, sports, Osama Bin Laden, Cynthia Watros, Shakira, Kaavya Viswanathan, Chris Brown, Ivanka Trump, Britney Spears, Axl Rose, Michelle Rodriguez, Pussycat Dolls, pop music, rock music, Hanso Foundation, America's Next Top Model, puppies, Paris Hilton, Megan Fox, soccer, Da Vinci Code, Jodie Marsh, Survivor, Naruto, Pope Benedict XVI, Opus Dei, Oprah Winfrey, reality tv, television, search engines

Technorati directory tags for this weblog:
futurism golf antiaging
life extension history literature gadgets
science Victorian
time travel predictions
prophecy books weird

Reminder: Celebrate Alexander J. Gibson Day(s) March 24-25, 2006

Found on digg:

"Alexander J. Gibson is the fictional hero in a weird science fiction book from 1892. The book predicted television, digital watches and bullet trains decades before they came to be. This site has the entire novel online, and this story is the site owner's attempt to promote a new holiday based on science fiction and ... golf!"

Hmm .. it all sounds vaguely familiar.

read more | digg story

More Predictions of Dramatic Life Extension Breakthroughs

In the 21st century, state-of-the-art anti-aging technologies may extend human lifespans at an unprecedented rate, bringing with them a host of social and economic challenges, says biologist Shripad Tuljapurkar of Stanford University.

Tuljapurkar estimates that between 2010 and 2030, the modal, or most common, age of death will increase by 20 years if anti-aging therapies come into widespread use. This projected increase reflects a lifespan growth rate that is five times faster than the current rate, increasing the modal age of death in industrialized countries such as the United States from roughly 80 years to 100.

read more | digg story

How to Make a 12 foot GPS wall clock

"So here is the little project that grew to 12 feet. We added a GPS receiver so now we have a 12' clock that sets itself, displays hours/minutes/seconds, and is accurate to 100ns. Beats that bedside alarm!"

What's with all the clock building projects these days? Anyway, the photo alone is worth a visit to the web site.

read more | digg story

1000 Suns From Huge Concentrating Dish

"The dish is 4,300 square feet, but the actual solar panel part is only 3 inches by 3 inches! This will soon be tested by the National Solar Energy Center in Israel."

Somehow this brings to mind that guy in Portland or Seattle I blogged about previously who built his own DIY death ray machine ... and array of little vanity-type mirrors that focused the sun's rays to melt plastic army men, Peeps, etc.

read more | digg story

Games Unleash Imagination

Will Wright at Wired explains how games cultivate the player's mind through experimentation and trial and error. He argues that games are not always violent, addictive, and childish but they can inspire creativity, community, self-esteem, and problem-solving.

read more | digg story

How to Make a "Bob Clock"...uses 60 Multicolor LCDs

Once upon a time, when I was 16 or so, I used to haunt the electronic component aisles of my local Radio Shack. This was back when almost all the had was electonic components ... transistors and capacitors and resistors, and solder and soldering irons with which to put them all together.

I also bought books full of schematics on how to make electronic burglar alarms, electronic rain monitors, airport control tower monitors, etc. ... but never actually managed to make anything.

Anyway, I continue to harbor envy for guys like Bob, who not only make their own schematics, but bring them to reality, as with this clock. (You have to see the web site to understand how the clock displays the time.)

To whet your appetite, I quote from the Bob Clock inventor's introduction:

"The inspiration came to me in a dream sometime (I think it was arround 1997). This is the only time ever that I have really gotten an idea from a dream, and actually carried it out..."

read more | digg story

Pac-Man: Restored and Reloaded!

Remember when Pac-Man was state-of-the-art fun, even "futuristic?" Heck, I remember when Pong was all that. Here's an incredibly detailed (some might say obsessive) about one person who bought an old Pac-Man arcade made, broke it down, and proceeded to rewire and restore it to perfect working order.

read more | digg story

Yahoo Employees not Happy about Tom Cruise's Visit

Yahoo's decision to invite Tom Cruise to speak today at company headquarters has generated some snide comments among employees, some of which are being aired in the blogosphere. The responses seem to highlight resentment among some in the rank and file toward the general perception that the company is trying to go Hollywood.

OK, so why did I blog this? It's just the story that happened to be handy when I wanted to test the blogging capability on the digg site. What is digg? Check it for yourself: www.digg.com.

And in the future (assuming this test is successful) I will stick with blogging items that fit under the loosely defined theme of Future Perfect.

read more | digg story

Happy Alexander J. Gibson Day(s), 2006!

The second-annual joyous observance of Alexander J. Gibson Day(s) is fast approaching--on March 24 and 25, to be precise. What will you be doing to celebrate? What? You never heard of either Alexander J. Gibson or Alexander J. Gibson Day(s). Please do not allow yourself to remain in ignorance a moment longer. Learn the whole story right here.

A Word Processor for Writers

Here's a great little program for aspiring authors, diarists, obsessive note takers and free-form listmakers: Page Four. It's not weighted down with all the secretarial/corporate-type features of Word and its clones. Instead it offers you a workspace to just jump right in and start writing. At the same time it gives you an elegantly simple means of saving, organizing and archiving your work. You can try it for 30 days for free and then if you want to own it, it costs 25 bucks. Check it out.

Learn Spanish

Although I'm hard pressed to tie it in to either golfing or futurism, I did want to call attention to this new blog, Learn Spanish. As the (ahem) very well known author of the blog states, it is for "who wants to learn Spanish" with "lots of information on the best ways to learn Spanish, whether from a school, on a vacation in a Spanish speaking country, or on your own using language learning software, audio and video." Not so much a place to learn Spanish, actually, but rather a place to learn about learning it.

Technorati Tags:
spanish, learn spanish, spanish instruction, study spanish, spanish language, spanish schools, Spain, Guatemala, Mexico, education, tourism, travel, South America, Central America, study spanish, learning Spanish, language, Latin America

Golf Articles Library Added to Main Site

I realize that to many of our readers, this site might seem to be having a permanent identity crisis. Is it a science fiction site, a self-improvement site, an anti-aging site, a Victorian literature site, or what? Well, the answer is ... yes. This blog in particular is a little bit of all of the above. The main site to which it is attached, though, has a bit more of a focus. A big part of that focus is definitely GOLF. To underscore this, and to make the site more useful to you golfers who happen to find your way here, I'm pleased to announce that I've added an entire library of golf articles -- 1,000+ articles, in fact, with more to come.

Technorati Tags:
golf, golfing, golf articles, golfer, golf news, golf instruction, golf news, golf courses, golf vacation, hobbies, games, sports, recreation, retirement, advice, instruction, learning, experts