2002-12-03 - 10:36 a.m.

Wow.

Out of the million ideas I had last night, one of them is to record my voice saying "Dear Diary" every morning. I wonder, if I squished it down to mp3 format, how small I could make the file? I might be able to get away with storing a year's worth of entry intros on a gold membership...

Wow.. My mind is still so full. I slept very well, too. I mean, I couldn't sleep until about 2:00 or so, but I jumped up at 9:30, which is a relatively short time later. I need to adjust the timing of my ceremonies. (I'm thinking of the Earth's Children series when I say that, because the people in it are such good examples of how to live healthy lives, for the most part.)

Where to start? If only I could record all the things I thought to myself in the shower, then today's entry would be complete and then some.

I want to start some programming projects. Last night I actually did, I got so far as installing some programs, but I didn't get to any actual programming. That's ok, though, I didn't have an expectation of doing it, it would have been gravy if I did. I had some *wicked* ideas for programs, though, mostly related to thoughts I'd had before, but a lot of them new, too. I know it's fantasy to wish that I could remember all the details of every thought... human minds just don't have that kind of capacity.... yet.

A lot of the ideas I had were sort of prophetic visions about the future. I'm comfortable saying that because I have an idea about some of the unchangeable traits of our society, and it's a cinch to predict what may happen based on the new technologies and devices becoming available to our children. Our children aren't like us.. they are specialized versions of us. The way I thought of it, I may only be able to achieve a certain proficiency with data entry, but my children's children might be exposed so early to such an intuitive interface to a computer that it becomes, to their way of thinking, a part of them.

Ooh! One of the thoughts I had was a recurring one of using mechanical gloves with a combination of magnet and gear-driven force feedback. Think of typical "data gloves", but very light ones mind. At the pad of each finger, a metal disc is woven into the fabric, and wherever else along the contact points between the hand and glove that is necessary to accurately gauge the position of all parts of the hand at any given moment. The discs are held firmly to a receiver tower, basically a little tree-looking thing with a branch for each finger that has gears and mechanisms inside it to be able to relay forces, but is light enough to move without much resistance. Kind of like you forget a mouse is there.

Of course, I'm imagining the technology once it's mature.. early devices would be clunky as hell, but they're coming and I can't wait for them to get here :o)

Anyway, each disc is secured in place so the hand doesn't slip relative to the receiver tower. To represent solid surfaces, the branches of the tower can be locked into place by a mechanism that slips a block into a gear wheel. (It's super cool to watch theoretical engineering diagrams of possible devices to accomplish tasks like these float across my mindscape...) Anyway, picture yourself tapping your finger on a virtual table. You lower the finger quickly, and as the computer senses that it would hit the surface, it activates the finger lock and your finger fetches up against the suddenly unyielding receiver tower. It's a bit harder to do for objects that hit the back of your hand. I'm thinking that there should be some sort of cradle design to the glove where it has a rigid backbone that can apply pressure from any side of your hand and block motion in any direction like that. It needs more thought anyway, but the basic idea is there.

This method would do for placing "solid" virtual objects in front of someone, but to give them texture the device needs an addition. Aside from blocking gears to prevent finger movement, eletro-mechanical actuators would vary a magnetic field around each individual contact point to relay the features of the virtual object at that particular location. Remember dot-matrix printers? Well, instead of shooting a metal wire out as it passed across paper, revealing a virtual character array, the electro-mechanical actuators on this receiver tower would relay ripples and waves of shape as you passed your finger over the surface of an object. Ideally, strong magnets around each contact point would be able to apply forces directly to the metal disc woven into the fabric so that there could be a space between the fingers and the device. I know magnetic fields of this strength and sophistication aren't currently used in commercial electronics, but they could be... ohhh yes and I can't wait for the day!

A thought like that crossed my mind in about 10 minutes last night. This morning it took me a good 20 to write up exactly what I was talking about, because I fleshed in a lot of details I had glossed over last night.

The amazing thing is that I proceeded immediately onto another equally deep and astounding thought and kept it up for hours on end.

Oh yeah, I remember a line I thought of this morning. My mind was flowering. It was bursting forth with secret blushes :o) I had creativity bursting out of every pore and tumbling from my fingertips. oh! OH... wow.. I remember some other deep thought that I had on the way to drop off the letter.

Ok, more background.. but first some cryptic encoding of the idea in my head so I can remember it later.

Control of a length of material. Once material control is established and patterns are learned, patterns can be refined. However, there comes a time when very little effort is used in effectively learning and storing new material. When this happens, work at the next level. [If you don't understand something, study it.] The next level is a fractal order of magnitude that breaks the original length being controlled into two or more pieces, each piece now being under independent control and repeat until the limit of calculation power is reached. This process results in a controlled set of material that has at its 'root' a relatively large rigid object which is surrounded by gradually smaller yet more limber appendages.

There is a mental equivalent to this physical body hierarchy. [snails are always growing, that's why they have extruded shapes.] The brain has grown in a plant-like fashion which has resulted in a fractal spiral structure. [only when nanotechnology is achieved and we are able to accurately catalog the number, size and activity of important cells in our brain, at which point many mental diseases will by fully understood.] The structures in the brain are responsible for controlling an appendage each, and their hierarchy is a (delegatory -- deferential) one as well.

Ok, I have to get on with the rest of the entry. I have to leave in 15 minutes to pick Tanis up and I haven't eaten yet.

Among the more important things I thought of last night is the frequency with which I'm allowed to conduct ceremonies. I realized that they are far too powerful and useful to be abandoned our abstained from completely. However, that same power limits their frequency because it will take a long long time to fully sort through and work on all the dreams and goals that are created in one session. Here are the guidelines that I have come up with: once every 3 months minimum, once every week maximum. I think once a week is far too frequent and so I'm more than willing to tighten that one a bit. Aside from that, anything that you do once a week or more often falls into a schedule and that is one thing that I don't think I should do with ceremonies.

I wrote a little note yesterday, and it's applicable at this point in my life, since I know I'll be facing some struggles in this respect:

"Learn to say 'no' to yourself, and be firm about it."

Au revoir :o)

ooh.. here's another one: "Say what I say, but don't repeat what I say."

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