NaNoWriMo is about setting a deadline and sticking to it. It’s easier to turn a bad novel in to a good novel through editing than to turn no novel in to any kind of novel. By getting something down on paper (or computer screen) you defeat the scariest antagonist in the world, a blank page.

So this is my public deceleration that in the month of November 2011, I will write a 50,000 word novel.

Now I just have to figure out what to write about.

There seems to be two types of comments on the Amazon page for this Blu-ray set: people complaining about the changes made to the original trilogy and people telling those people to buy the theatrical release on DVD.  Well to the first group I would say, I hope that some day Lucas, or his estate,* will decide to release the original theatrical version of Star Wars on blu-ray, but you will probably have to wait a while.  To the second group I would say, the original theatrical version on DVD is a substandard transfer without even color or gamma correction.  The original trilogy must have been color corrected and restored in preparation for the CGI vandalism that is the Special Edition.  Why not release the pre-CGI versions of the movies?

Despite all that, it was definitely worth it to see the first scene between Darth Vader and Princess Leia in high definition.  There are details in costumes and sets that you can’t see on the DVD version.  The whole movie looks great as long as you ignore the bad CGI.  So, I’ll accept the changes as the price of admission to see the movies I love for the first time on blu-ray, but I’ll never forget that Han shot first.

* This in no way should be taken as a threat against Mr. Lucas’ life or a request for anyone else to harm him.

I am working on recovering my old posts.  Unfortunately I never backed up my old blog.  When they have been recovered, they should appear bellow this one.

The number of transistors that can be put on a computer microprocessor doubles every two years. This combined with new materials, such as diamond, will produce a dramatic increase in processing power. This increased processing power will improve all levels of computing from multi-million dollar super computers to portable devices such as digital media players and cell phones.

Putting more processing power in to portable devices combined with breakthroughs in machine learning will lead to more intelligent devices. These devices, the successors of the modern blackberry or smart phone, will be used to augment the imperfect human memory. Contextual awareness will allow the devices to anticipate our needs. Such as, if you are having a conversation with someone you haven’t seen for a while a smart device could remind you of the topic of the previous conversation, upcoming birthdays or if the person owes you money.

These smart devices will also be constantly connected to the internet. Distributed computing could further increase their power by allowing devices to act as a single computer and run complex programs that a single device would be incapable of running. The internet will become ubiquitous and portable devices will become the primary interface allowing people to spend more time away from their computers without sacrificing productivity. We are already connected to the internet for a significant amount of the day. I believe within ten years we will start to be connected 24 hours a day. The internet already gives everyone easy access to a significant portion of human knowledge. I believe that this will increase and will lead to a more globalized culture.

This globalized culture could lead to greater understanding between geographically separated people. Easy exchange of ideas could lead to further scientific breakthroughs. The only prediction that I can make with certainty is that the future will be stranger than anyone can predict.

I put in the complete text of “Romeo and Juliete” and got this.

It seems that this is a viral marketing campaign for a new HBO series called True Blood.

The countdown was to a live video chat with the gate keeper. The queue
is to talk to her and try to convince her to give you access to the
site (although some people have already gotten a peek inside).

Another site has popped up, bloodcopy.com.
It seems to be part of the game masquerading as a fan site. It is a
Word Press blog with a forum. You have to register to view the forum.
One of the administrators links to YouTube video. They seem to be tracking our progress at either Unfiction or Imersion Unlimited.

Also they seem to have disabled the log in on revenantones.com (which leads me to believe no one has been granted access yet) and removed or protected the images that Screen Rant found yesterday.

And I just found Bloodcopy’s bookmarks on del.icio.us.

the password was #4ndd4ybr0u6h7b4ckmyni6h7# but you don’t need it
anymore). I only had a few minutes to browse around this morning, but I
noticed several users had a portion of, what I believed to be, a red
kanji character as their avatar.

So I pieced them together and made this partial symbol.

I only had 7 of 9 symbols (Star Trek reference anyone?) but with the help of my handy-dandy kanji dictionary (and a lucky guess) I was able to identify it as SHIN / ma (眞), the symbol for true, genuine, real or right. (Could this be the answer to one of the gatekeepers questions? Are you real?)

Here are the two missing avatars (as drawn, badly, by me in MS Paint).

I first heard about this from JC Hutchins. His Flickr page has the best images of the red symbols (which I have focused on after failing to figure anything out from the black symbols).

Here’s what I have so far from the red symbols.

Each symbol is three letters, every occurrence of a letter seems to
be an exact copy, although sometimes mirrored and/or rotated.

The letter groups as far as I can tell are (clockwise from bottom):

NOT ONE SEN SEC SCO OMC OMR ERM ERV EEV ENV ENA ANN ANT NOT

The Ms could be Ws. The letters are repeated in groups of three so
the first three symbols contain N. The second through fourth contain E.

If you continue the pattern (and wrap around the circle for the last two groups) you get:

NESCOMREVENATO (or NESCOWREVENATO with W instead of M)

I see several words:

NES / COM / REVENATO

NESCO / MR / E / VENATO

NE / SCO / MR / EVE / NATO

I guess it could be an anagram (or with a W).

Maestro Convene

Ace Mover Sonnet

Even A Stone Crow

A Crow Sonnet Eve

More discussion here and here.

And on the subject of content I’m going to add a Jargon File word of the day sometime next week. I’ll probably put it in the sidebar (which has already grown a little long) and make it available through an RSS feed.