Gene Rodenberry for Man of the Century, Steve Jobs comes in second

Apple rolled out the iPad this week, and I'm in love. I also see the light now, I see the direction we're all heading into the future - and the future is Star Trek. Gene Rodenberry's utopian vision of the future - with all it's technology to make our lives better is just around the corner.

This week Steve Jobs held up a 10" device that looks quite familiar, Gene invented it years ago, and called it the P.A.D.D. - which stands for Personal Access Display Device. The prop itself was devised for the Star Trek Next Generation series in the 80s. The name PADD was suggested by a research consultant on the show - Richard Arnold. The production crew for the show actually referred to them as "hall passes" on the show. If you think I'm that much of a geek for just knowing that, I just happen to have a copy of the Star Trek Technical Manual on my bookshelf. Yup, I like tech stuff - even the crap that hasn't been invented yet. Until now.

There's more in this book and from Rodenberry's imagination that now exists, how about your cell phone? Even people who despise the trek universe can readily relate your cell phone to Captain Kirk's communicator from the 1960s TV show. Even the angle that both devices open to conform to one's head was thought of by the original prop designers. Our modern devices follow the same logic, hence making it look like all cell phone designers are trek geeks who's inspiration for modern design draws from the same source.

It's often been said over the years that Rodenberry's innovation and creativity would someday shape our world. It's amazing when you think about it - just how much that's true. The man wasn't just a writer in Hollywood, he was a true visionary futurist. He saw tech trends and his little TV show that almost never made it past the pilot episode, allowed him to exercise his visions - even if it was all just make believe. Today, some of his visions are real.

Enter the iPad.

Steve Jobs must be a trek fan - either that or his entire design group is. This wouldn't surprise me at all. Techies and trekkies are fairly interchangeable adjectives. The iPad is a personal communications device. Sound familiar? It plays video, music, displays books, and does tons more, it's just shy of a computer. It's completely portable, interfaces with other devices wirelessly and effortlessly, basically putting the world at your fingertips in a small easy to carry lightweight package. Just like the PADD from Rodenberry's imagination. Just like the cell phone, he hit the nail on the head with his vision, or on the other hand, the tech geeks just couldn't get his vision out of their minds when designing it. It all falls to Gene again.

Makes you wonder what's next?

So far, Star Trek has given us wireless portable communications, data access in multiple forms, voice interface, portable memory (they invented the idea of a computer disk), wireless earpiece - remember Uhura's headpiece on the series? Look at your bluetooth earpiece! Then there was biometrics, sliding doors and the GPS system. Yup, even that - onboard the ship, the crew could tune into your tricorder or communicator and precisely give your position on the ground, from orbit. Just like our modern GPS system, but thought of by Gene in 1964.

Scientists around the world are thinking of ways to make Gene's other brain farts come to pass. They're messing with laser weapons, point to point transport, and of course the elusive warp drive. These things are dreams for now, but at one time, most of the gadgets on the show were dreams. Now we take some for granted. My kids won't ever remember a time without some of these devices. Warp drive is impossible, so said Albert Einstein. He said that faster than light travel could never be achieved. Einstein's theory of relativity states that which says that it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an object with mass to the speed of light, since the ship itself isn't actually moving. Scientists are now messing with ways to disprove his theory. Read here to find out what they're playing with.

Bored scientists are also messing with molecular transport. They have actually achieved it in labs on the atomic level. Imagine a day when we just step into a booth and reappear at work, or the mall, or wherever. Car companies and big oil companies would obviously squash the research, but it could happen. Rodenberry had a problem with his vision in the early days. Someone asked him how people would move between the ship and a planet. The ship, as his vision say it, couldn't land. He had the idea of shuttles on board, but that just took too long. As with many of Star Trek's toys, the transporter came as a solution to an entertainment problem. How to move the cast around in an entertaining way while at the same time keeping the show going. It's more fun seeing the good captain fighting some ugly alien than seeing him flying to the said ugly alien. Rodenberry simply said we'll beam them down, and that was that. Another lexicon enters the language.

Of all Rodenberry's visions of the future the one I'm afraid we'll never see is his vision of peace.

He was both ridiculed and praised for his views on ethnic and racial integration. He was the first to put an interacial kiss on TV. Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) and WIlliam Shattner (Kirk) kissed in the episode "Plato's Stepchildren", which aired November 22, 1968. It was groundbreaking. Rodenberry took some heat from NBC for this, the network fearing a backlash from the conservatives in the deep south. They insisted that two takes be made of the scene; one with the kiss and one without. The cast and crew didn't like that idea. Nichols related later that they intentionally kept messing up the scene without the kiss and eventually only one take was ever made. The uproar subsided and again, Rodenberry is the first to do something. What a surprise. Today, we wouldn't think twice about it.

Having a multinational crew aboard was a common theme in 50s and 60s sci-fi. Rodenberry added some new flavour to that as well. When the show first aired, there was no Russian helmsman. Chekov was an afterthought. There were scots, japanese, american, and someone from 'the African Union', another of Rodenberry's visions. No Russian. This was after all, the cold war! After the series began there was mumbling from of all places, the Soviet Union, chiding the producers about the lack of anyone from that side of the planet. Rodenberry's solution - Pavel Chekov. the rest is history.

The idea of war and poverty being eliminated by the 23rd century is never going to come to pass, sadly, the one vision of Rodenberry's that won't. But we still have time.

So Steve Jobs and Apple Corporation have done well to keep the dream alive. They have taken the ideas of a true visionary and continued to allow us to benefit from one man's dreams. Apple, and it's competitors may take credit for these little toys that make our lives better and push the boundaries of technology, but at the end of the day, Gene Rodenberry takes the credit. The iPad may have the Apple logo on the back of it, but it has Gene Rodenberry's inspiration inside of it.

Yeah, my secret is out, I'm a trekkie in disguise. Get over it. And I will find a way to have my new iPad have an LCARS interface.

Kingsville

Hi. Haven't been here in a while, I'm trying to get used to new digs at work - again. Yup, for the fifth time in one year, my boss has moved me to another office, this time in Kingsville, 48 kms away. I started the new job on Friday, moving my stuff into my cubicle - I've given up my office for Dilbertville. I set up computers, unpacked boxes and hung pics of my kids on the 'walls'. Today, I started serious work, helping with the papers.

My job is primarily prepress, which is the front end aspect of printing, in which the customers send their files digitally and I scream bloody murder when they're all messed up, thus saving the press manager from screaming bloody murder when he tries to print from garbage. It's fun. Most of the time the files are perfect, we deal with some pretty smart people who know what they're doing. Sometimes though, we get duds; my job then becomes fixing the problem. It may involve fixing it on our machines or in some cases getting the customers to send the files again properly. It's a living. In the next month or so we're to get press upgrades, so I came in just when all the fun happens. It's quite interesting helping with new processes and fixing the bugs in the system. It gives you a sense of real accomplishment helping develop something that will be around for a long time and having your stamp on it - even in a small way.

Kingsville is a nice town. It's the southernmost town in mainland Canada, and quite picturesque. We have often gone there on our days in the county road trips, heading for any of the many attractions in the area, or just to have lunch somewhere. It's just that kind of place you'd want to walk down mainstreet for no apparent reason. I've been doing that since I was a kid - my mom loved a little restaurant on Main Street called 'the Dutch'. It used to be just a lunch counter kind of thing, I will go there for lunch sometime this week, it's been years since I was in there and I'm curious to know if it's changed. In towns like this, things don't change much.

The only real downfall to this new schedule and office is the hours. I now have a one hour commute, instead of my normal 10 minutes on the expressway. One hour of morning county traffic on one of the busiest roads around - Highway 3. In the morning, it's a parking lot. Getting out of Windsor at that time is also a pain, I have to leave earlier and therefore I hit all the rush hour traffic heading for the Oldcastle industrial area. I'm sure at some point I'll find a way around that, which of course, will toss me into the path of a few school buses I've managed to avoid.

My speedometer upon arrival -

48.7 kms one way. Nice commute.

So I haven't been here much lately, I'm trying to adjust. It's only been two days, but they've been long. I was going to write over the weekend, but I was having too much fun to bother. I'll get back at it, and considering I received a message this morning asking if I'd like an advertisement on my site, I guess I should keep going!

Have a good week.

Evaluation

I'm evaluating my career. I'm looking at whether or not change is needed to improve my state of mind. I'm looking at something different.

Sometimes change can be beneficial, and then again, it can really mess you up if you go about it the wrong way. If I do this, I risk messing up whatever stability I have. But on the flipside it the benefits to such a drastic move could really help. It could give me hope for my mental well being, and bring up my spirits which will help me fix the other issues I've got - I'm still reeling from the past year and all the misery it brought. The events of the past week at work have been right up there with the crappy days I experienced of late. It's time to change all that.

Should I change my profession completely? Print production is really all I know, and it's a niche market, so I don't know how to progress in that field without leaving town. I don't like that option. I could look outside my comfort zone into areas that are somewhat related, but the uncertainty of that scares me. Fear is a powerful motivator at times, but with my current job still there, I'm not afraid enough to follow this path. I still have a paycheque, and as long as I deal with the crap, I will for quite a while to come.

I thought about going completely freelance, but that's not exactly solid. I can't budget on a hope. Believe me, I've been there, it's not fun. I like doing freelance graphics, the idea of working from home on my terms, with no boss and no pressure gets me quite perked, but again, it' s a huge risk unless you've managed to build a huge customer base. I haven't. I have a few clients, but not enough to pay the bills.

What about a complete direction change? Why not going after something I've never done before? Again, fear is a motivator; I'm afraid of losing the stability for something untried. I'd like to, but feeding my kids trumps the excitement and adrenaline rush of a new challenge.

Then there's always the lottery.

I think I'll wait it out for now, and see what arises. I do have that option. The only real rush is to fix my frame of mind; to keep me out of the loony bin. I have what Kim didn't last year when things got tough - a choice. She took a job she wasn't sure of and really didn't like because we had no choice. At least I still have a paycheque. That's positive, and I'll take it, but I'll open my mind to new things. A career change at 41? A decade or two ago it was unheard of, not now. I have to keep that in mind. Who knows - maybe I'll finally get my dream job!

In other news, the disaster in Haiti has amazed me in the past few days. It amazes me that such a small country that could easily fly under the world's radar, has motivated the same world to help. With all the turmoil we face in our lives, all the worry and fear we experience every day, this country has made us all realize we are extremely lucky and should thank God every day for what we have. Even when we have nothing, we have so much. The people of Haiti have nothing, and now their nothing has been destroyed. It's not fair that these people who have overcome so much pain and heartache since their independence just can't catch a break. It's only right that we help them. And we will continue to help them.

When the earthquake hit we heard about a retired Windsor priest - Father Rene Giroux, was missing, thankfully, he's safe. But that still leaves over 1,000 Canadians missing. With luck, they will all be found, but reality dictates that there may be more Canadians who will not come home. These are people who for one reason or another found themselves in a place with nothing to offer but despair. In the case of Father Giroux, he went there to try to change that. I'm sure that the lives he affected in his time there will thank him, maybe their lives are slightly less desperate with his help. Hopefully, the international aid effort will lessen the despair.

So I start the week with new direction in mind; renewing my own hope for future successes. Similarly, many in Haiti are thinking the same thing.

Cheers.

On the Road Again

For the fifth time in a year and a half, I'm moving offices. Next week I uproot my new digs in Tecumseh and move to Kingsville. Just me. Nobody else.

That just sucks.

I hate the idea. But even more than that, I hate that first of all; everyone knew before I did, and secondly, no matter how much I bug my boss, he isn't saying shit about it. Just that I'm going, and that's that. It's really not fair to me, I bust my ass in there and he treats me like something he scraped off his shoe. Really, why should I be excited about this?

I'm going to be the prepress person. I'm going to output all film for our press. That means being the middle man between our press people and the customers. If anything goes wrong with the files being sent for printing, it stops at me. Theoretically. I also will work towards updating the current technological situation in that office - bringing the people there into the twentieth century. We'll work on the twenty-first down the road. Finally on top of this, I'm bringing one of my magazines with me that I am solely responsible for every month, and still maintaining the IT for the company. This I get. I'm the production manager, hence I should manage to be where production happens.

That's about where my excitement ends. Kingsville is a one-hour commute. That's adding almost one hour and 45 minutes to my day. I also drive an SUV. Gas is going to kill me. I also am going to be cubicle dweller. I'm losing my office, which is not a big deal, but I will miss the privacy of being able to close my door and put some music on. No more. I will be in a 5'x5' cube with little more than a desk and a ton of noise. New people too, some I'm looking forward to working with, others I will take a wait and see attitude to.

I talked to someone down there today, in the early planning stages of the transfer. This person already has my duties laid out, most of it concerns this person's work, which is waiting for me. My response to this is NO. The argument started already. They don't realize that I'm coming there for very specific reasons - not to take over their work, but to enhance the abilities of the department. It made me wonder something - If I do your work, then do my work, on top of commuting two hours per day, what exactly are you planning on doing? Uh, that's right - nothing. I'll be damned if I'm putting in 50-60 hours per week doing other people's stuff. Nope. not gonna happen. This aught to be fun. Sometimes being the manager really does mean shit. People will push you for their own gains anyway.

I work well with the press manager, and the sales manager. The other people there are good folks, one is the mayor of the town, and County Warden, and is running for federal politics in the next election. One is the former owner of the company who stayed on after the parent company bought her out. And there are others, all local Kingsville people. I've been associating with them since the takeover, and have rarely had any complaints or issues. However only being a transient in that office has always disuaded the tendency to prolong any disagreement. Being there all the time my change that. There are those there who don't take well to change. They like the status quo, and part of my mandate is to break the status quo. I can see the approaching storm.

And I better invest in a raincoat.

Cheers.

Prime Minister Harper is a Fucktard

We elected a fucktard.

I really don't think I'm saying anything here that most people don't already know, however, the fact that he's the PM at all is an indication that he does have his followers. But his decision to yet again prorogue parliament (for the second time in a year) is probably not earning him many more fans.

I normally don't jump into political opinions, I'm more or less apathetic when it comes to it - I don't really think it matters who's in power - they all mess it up eventually. To me it's just a matter of how long it takes before they do something really stupid that raises the public's ire. Harper managed to do that a little quicker than his predecessors. It sucks to say this but the only effective political system (however flawed and stupid) is totalitarian. The democratic system that we enjoy is plagued by issues that prevent governance. In-fighting, constant attempts to derail opposition (sound familiar?), and public scorn essentially stop the process.

I'm not telling anyone anything they don't already know. Nor is announcing that Harper is fucktard news. This guy has proved time and time again that he's an arrogant, self-centred and self-serving prick. From day one when the press caught him shaking his son's hand on the first day of school instead of any fatherly show of affection, we've known this man is a robot with a programming error.

This video is from the last time he prorogued parliament. I'm sure Air Farce will have fun with this one too.

It's not uncommon for parliament to be suspended for major national events, the olympics are no exception. However, the Harper has taken this opportunity to throw EVERY piece of pending legislation out the window. When you prorogue parliament, the session ends. Period. Everything starts over. Everything from the majority opposition pending debate. Every parliamentary committee stops, every back-bencher legislation (which won't get in anyway, but still has a place). Harper has shut it all down with the excuse that it's more important for MPs to attend a hockey game or see some figure skaters than govern the country.

Harper's not stupid in one respect - he's found a way around his minority disfunction. If you can't beat 'em - prorogue 'em. He can't pass anything of his own by the majority opposition, and the opposition bills on progress will pass with or without him. So get 'em all cancelled! The funny thing is the date parliament is coming back is the day before the budget is due out. That means there will be no budget consultations. No meetings, no input of any kind. This guy is too much. He's an arrogant ass who thinks that he's pulling the wool over the voter's eyes. It would really surprise me though, if there is any fallout. Nothing will happen, the voters themselves as a majority are still a trusting lot who think that there must be a reason for it all. Yeah, there is - Harper has just prolonged his government for another three months.

At any time the opposition can call a vote of non-confidence. All they need is a consensus among the opposition parties (harder than you think with one of the largest being the separatists). Did Harper see some writing on the wall with upcoming legislation? Did he get worried about the vote? Not likely. He's seen the opposition's track record of late - they can't get it together either. Between the lot of them we have the most ineffective parliament in the history of this country. Think about it - when have we ever seen a minority government that has free reign as if they control the whole house, just because of back room deals and an opposition with no teeth?

So the party goes on. The business of the house stops until March. The Governor General gives Harper his way (she really didn't have to, but I think she was afraid of the repercussions of saying no to the request to prorogue). The opposition will take the time to come up with yet another ineffective strategy to oust Harper and his government, and of course, fail. Harper will squeal with delight about the fact that he gets to be the Prime Minister for another session. This arrogant ass has stopped the business of the country because of his own narcissism.

Can you think of a better reason for him to be voted out than not doing the job he was elected for? I think even hardcore supporters of Harper will agree to that.