Dean's World

I'm my own best link. And I don't even blog.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Link via Dustbury.

I'm my own best link. And I don't even blog.

Whether you blog or not Arnold you have a lot going on in you little town of around 5K. For the rest of you it is famed for:

The Troll Capitol of the World

Internationally known Mustard Museum.

Next to the beautiful Little Norway

A sister city Sogndal in Norway

We all know about the Evil Overlord List, right? But how about the poor henchmen?

--|PW|--

Which is all similar to, but not the same as, blue collar culture in, say, the American south.

We don't have blue collars in the South. We have sweat beads, cow-farts, grease monkeys, and red-necks. But that ain't so bad if you think about it the right way.


I don't know if any of you Vad (do what is nowadays called Urban Exploration) but here is a really nice vadding expedition to the Cherry Knowle Hospital. Good pics. If you hit the Overnight link you'll be able to see the whole spiel. I wish I had more time to vad like that.


I've been following this project at the recommendation of some friends of mine at MIT and in the military.

It has given me some interesting ideas.

This is the ISN Team 7 Project.


I'm not a big fan of current trends in new suit designs because unlike current designers I think suits should concentrate more on enhancing and augmenting biological functions (especially sensory) and less on attempting to develop new mechanical and muscular functions.

But one thing that occurred to me in studying this layout is the fact that if suits are developed which can mimic environments through nanomechanical imitation of surrounding environments (that is by the suit using nanites to mock the environment for camouflage) then you don't need cameras in the suit to transmit graphic data to a traffic and command handler.

All the guys running the operation need to do is develop a program which will create a virtual mockup of the same configurations the suits physically produce, but in data form. That is the suit has to "read" the environment to create the camouflage pattern, then the program reads the configuration the suit takes and you a have mirror-inverted 3-D image of whatever the suit is reading extending in all directions away from the soldier, 360 degrees.

If you had let's say four guys to an infiltration team then create virtual models of each suit read and you have an immense data pool, once the noise (and overlap distortion) is eliminated, of the local environment and you don't need cameras and the energy they use because the suit itself is the camera and should be able to read the environment passively, rather than actively releasing signals, like a camera would. With the right nanites the suit itself could also posses nightvision and ultraviolet read capabilities, and possibly even read IR.

You could also create gloves, as per this project, that can read environmental conditions by touch or by near exposure, and you could have tactile, heat signature, visual/graphic information, possibly chemical and audio analysis, all running passively through the suit. The soldier or operative would be low signature, passively enabled and yet his suit could be feeding various types of data about point and environmental reference without the need for high energy active systems (cameras, etc.).

I got the idea from two things, looking at the design construct and project objectives and thinking about the Resurrection Body. Would a spiritual body, which nevertheless has the ability to physically interact with the environment be actively, or passively interactive, and if passively then how could it accumulate the greatest possible amount of useful data without exposing itself to detection? My idea was that the very method it used for disguise would also be the same system it would use for sensory analysis of any envioremtnet it might infiltrate.

Anywho I'm gonna think about the implications awhile.

Well, I'm off to bed. Just got back in myself and it's been a long, long day.
For the whole flam damily.
I'm just plain tuckered.

For varying reasons, the Evil Overlord Link got me thinking about a good friend, which brought me to his Wikipedia page (Da-yum), which in turn led me to The Hall of Infamy, which is all about blunders in science fiction.

Of course, now I'm wondering if I should update the wiki to point to my mother's eulogy, but she might not like that.

I also have a really big secret.

You're gay? I already knew that.

Here's a blast from the past.

Oh, you young kids will laugh, or just scratch your heads; but at one point, 80 percent of US households collected trading stamps of some sort.

I also have a really big secret.

Well, let's hear it.

It's not a secret worth keeping unless you tell somebody.

We had S&H stamp night. My mother would pull down the big rooster cookie jar from the top of the Frigidaire and we'd get out her paper books and sponges, and start sticking. There were the small stamps, and I think you needed 50 to fill a page. There were larger stamps, which were worth ten of the small ones, so it only took 5 to fill a page if you had the bigger ones. It was exciting to look through the Green Stamp catalog to see what might be purchased. I know we traded for a blue bowling ball bag, which was made out of molded plastic and which sits in my garage as I type. I remember also a scotch plaid water cooler with matching ice chest and car blanket. I think that must have cost a lot of books, so I doubt we got them all at the same time. We also got a set of 3 floor pillows, made of vinyl with one salmon colored, one white and one green. They nested into a gold-plated wire form and could be used as a foot stool or taken out for us kids to loll around on.

I remember the little stamp dispenser next to the checkout. The clerk would push the appropriate $ button and it spit out just the right amount of stamps, based on how much money you spent.

Wow, Martin! Great memories!

Linda