I wonder
2010: The Year We Make Contact
Jan 11th
Photo courtesy of photoxpress.com
The decade we just said good-bye to produced a lot of technology. And I mean A LOT. But just because it arrived in our lives, homes and vocabulary doesn’t mean it has been useful. If technology is designed to improve our lives, it begs the question—does it actually? Lets take a look:
2000
- The Sony Play Station 2 came out this year (followed by the Xbox in 2001). When does a gaming system become good enough? They have become more realistic, more interactive, and more addictive. I think this is fodder for a whole other blog…
2001
- Wikipedia is launched. Providing a nice consolidated location of all that is truth provided by none other than… anybody who wants to write something. I have seen a shift in the use of Wikipedia, even with myself, to it being a bit of a joke source to being a trusted primary source of information. Remember kids: just because it’s online, doesn’t mean it’s truth…unless it’s my blog, of course.. ;o)
2002
- My middle daughter is born. I really can’t remember much else after that due to the amnesia induced by sleep-deprivation. Where is the technology to fix colic? Where? That would be useful and would improve lives. Trust me.
2003
- NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity Mars Explorer Rovers (MER) land on Mars. To date, they have exceeded their one year mission life by 7 years. That makes them 433 years old in NASA years. Sweet! The Geek in me has been fascinated with Mars since I did a research paper in middle school on the Viking spacecrafts. I think the world expects that one day, we will actually send people to Mars. You can find out more about all the NASA missions with their iphone app.
2004
- Facebook. Now, we are all “friends”. I believe this has been the most interesting social experiment to date. The idea for it was conceived by a Harvard student, Mark Zuckerberg, while he was blogging (drunk) about his girlfriend who dumped him (you can read the story onWikipedia ;o) . You, too, can share even the most mundane events and musings throughout your day with all the people you are “friends” with. Like the best friend from elementary school, the ex-boyfriend/girlfriend from high school, college friends, co-workers, etc. It’s a brilliant way for companies to gather information about you and your group of friends. Everything from political views to the number of children you have, to your favorite movie. Pure marketing genius that has not been seen since 1994 when Jeff Bezos started creating ways to market more products and services to you based on everywhere you clicked and all the products you searched for or bought on Amazon.com. Facebook did it in just a couple of years without selling a single product to you vs. the almost 10 years it took Amazon to figure it out.
2005
- 2005…..2005….meh.
2006
- Nintendo’s Wii is first introduced, thus creating a group of people trying to figure out how to bowl while sitting down.
- Twitter is founded… Now @caseycaddell txts & talks in140 chrs, and a whole new vocabulary of words is created revolving around the word Twitter and tweet. It’s Twitterific.
- Planet 134340 (i.e. Pluto) was downgraded from a planet to a dwarf planet because the International Astronomical Union (IAU) decided they were all powerful and voted on a formal definition of a planet. I still have not accepted it. In fact I don’t know of anybody over 30 who has. It’s just wrong. Who demotes an entire planet?
- My youngest daughter is born. Things really start to get interesting in the geek household now. The Drama runs strong in all my daughters. And the eldest (who turned 7 in 2006) is old enough to use and desire technology. Go geeks!
2007
- Apple introduces the iPhone, forever changing the world and creating a whole class of people learning to read 2pt font and type with their thumbs in a 2 in by 1 in space. (reviews of some cool geeky iphone apps)(reviews of some great iphone apps for toddlers)
- The Kindle appears. I heard somebody mention they use it for a bookmark for their paper books. I do not have a Kindle but I have the Kindle app for the iPhone. I like it. There is a lot of talk about eReaders now, but it will be interesting to see if people use them or prefer paper books). My mom has a Sony e-Reader and she used to love it until a Windows update made it so it wouldn’t download books anymore. The Sony Corp. was no help, so I suppose she can use it for a bookmark now.
2008
- The Nintendo Wii Fit is introduced and it becomes another piece of exercise equipment that never gets used. And you can’t even hang laundry on it—what’s up with that?
- NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft successfully lands on the surface of Mars (cool!). Significant because NASA hasn’t done a controlled (emphasis on ‘controlled’) landing on Mars since Viking 2 in 1976 (see 2003). After 5 months of research by Phoenix, we are still arguing if there is water and life on Mars.
2009
- 2009: NASA crashes into the moon. I still don’t know how I feel about this one. Feels a bit like those people who demoted Pluto without asking
- 2009: My oldest daughter turns 1 decade old and now really has technology needs and desires.
- 2009: The SDG Group Inc. is founded. (Yes!)
Don’t forget 2010 is the year the monolith comes back and we get a second Sun. (If you are really geeky you will get that with the title of the blog. If not you can IMDB it.)
What technology impacted your life in the past decade?
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How cold is too cold for bubbles?
Dec 10th
Negative 6 degrees is cold. As The Wyf and I stared out at the cold night, my eyes landed on a bottle of bubbles the geeklets had left out. Hmm…I wonder what happens to bubbles when it’s really cold? So, The Wyf and I stepped outside to test our ideas. (As an FYI, -6 is really, really, really cold. Even the dog wouldn’t hang out with us.)
We blew bubbles and I assumed they would just pop when they started to freeze. But they didn’t. If they were mid air when the froze (5-10 seconds) they dropped and broke. If they landed on something before they froze, they would stick and you could watch them freeze. They looked a little crinkly with dents in them when the warm air inside them cooled and compressed. Some would crack when they froze, but still retained their shape, so it looked like a broken egg.
That was fun. 
© 2009, The Geek. All rights reserved. Click here for the Disclosure Statement
400th Anniversary of Galileos Telescope-Part 2
Aug 31st
Ok now that all of the partying has stopped from the 400th anniversary party…
(See 400th Anniversary of Galileo’s telescope-Part 1)
About a year later (1610) Galileo published his work, Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger), which verified that the earth does in fact, revolve around the sun, a theory that Nicolaus Copernicus had speculated about 120 years before, but couldn’t fully prove. This theory is called the Heliocentric theory-“how the planets revolve around the sun” vs. the predominant theory of the time called the Geocentric theory-“how the planets and sun revolve around the earth”. His theory was so crazy it landed Galileo in house arrest for the last 8 years of his life, ordered by the Pope himself. Back then the geocentric theory was so engrained that going against it was heresy.
So it makes me wonder (along with the “How do you really know it was Aug 25th“ thing see part 1), if you lived before Galileo’s time and we had this conversation:
You: “So what do you do for a living?”
Me: “I’m an astronomer”
You: “Ok. [pause]. So what do you do?
Me: “Oh. I study how the planets revolve around the earth”
You: “Oh, ok”
If you think about it this is profound. Before Galileo’s ideas became accepted the definition of what an astronomer did completely precluded him from ever getting the right answer because the planets don’t revolve around the earth. They, of course, revolve around the sun.
So back to my wondering… how many things in our life fall under a similar assumption, that precludes us from ever getting the right answer, because we think the planets revolve around us.
Just wondering…
Photo courtesy of PhotoExpress.com
© 2009, The Geek. All rights reserved. Click here for the Disclosure Statement
400th Anniversary of Galileos Telescope-Part 1
Aug 25th
On this day Aug 25th 1609 Galileo Galilei presented the world with the first commercial terrestrial telescope – the Spyglass (Though I wonder how do you really know for sure 400 years ago it was this day exactly? Hmmm…)
Quite amazing if you think about it. Galileo’s leather and wood contraption all the way to today’s Hubble telescope? AND it also happens to be Lady Bug’s 3rd birthday too. I know, I know. You are wondering how the Wyf and I planned that so well and, hmm, I am not sure really, but its cool ;o).
Anyway, the spyglass was not originally developed to look at the stars. He had sold it to the Venetian Senate as a way to spot the Turks, who kept raiding their ships (pesky Turks). It was the first telescope of the time that did not have its images upside down and this was the greatest feature ever invented until sliced bread was first introduced 319 years late in Missouri on July 7, 1928.
© 2009, The Geek. All rights reserved. Click here for the Disclosure Statement
