I’m sick of this “daylog” thing and I don’t know low LJers can stand to do what they do. It’s a boring chore that I doubt anyone reads anyway. I’m gonna switch it to “Currently” which is what it was originally going to be, a little blurb about what I’m currently reading, watching, etc. that is updated as the situation warrants.

I’ll move all the current daylog entries into the “personal” section.

Awoke late, got lost looking for a Taco Bell, created the new student forum site, went with Nat and Aaron to Cheesecake Factory (again). Wish there were a few more people around I knew, but it’s not bad.

Down time at work until Monday or so. Left early, sat around in the heat at home in a stupor. Eventually got up to go to Lizzy’s, but the elements worked against me, culminating in pouring rain as I arrived. Cleared up a few hours later and I went home. Chatted with the parents and read about the Tony’s before sleep.

Anyone here an Ender’s fan? So Ender Wiggin’s got this earring thingy with which he communicates to an entity known as Jane, an intelligent being trapped in a computer network, but, for our purposes, just another pseudo-intelligent computer system (today we call them AIs). Ender and Jane have discussions, she pipes in when he needs things — often pre-emptively, performs valuable functions for him like his banking, travel plans, and the like, and is all around a useful thing to have around.

But she isn’t around, is she? She’s off in the ether somewhere, in a computer network. Ender isn’t carrying Jane, he’s carrying a high-tech, always-on, super-sensing cell phone.

I haven’t talked about it lately, but for years I have been looking forward to the day of pervasive computing, generally embodied in the idea of the wearable computer. A completely personalized, customized, always-on, always-there personal agent that knows as much about you as you do yourself, that is completely patterned to your mental process, that senses where you are and what you are doing and why. It records your life, annotates, cross-references, and, just when you most need it (even if you don’t know it), it pops up with a perfectly relevent and important bit of information.

There is more to this vision, but that’s enough for now.

Does the wearable really need to be on your body at all? Do we need to worry about power usage, “personal networks,” distributed processing, and the like? Or does the advent if high-performance packet radio (i.e. cellular phone and data networks), coupled with WiFi, Bluetooth, and all the rest of it, give us an easier solution? Sure I still need the miniature sensor package, the heads-up display embeded in my glasses, the tiny clip-on video camera, and whatever other accessories I choose to use, but I don’t need the central unit to be anywhere near me. As long as I’m in range of some kind of radio network — and the system will be able to sense which, like a tri-band phone — I’m pretty much set.

Let’s make this a reality, folks!

Finished up some new web designs. Read about OpenACS. Spent a couple hours beginning to demolish a wooden kiosk. Ate some great barbecue chicken pizza. Ate some terrible chicken pesto pizza. Finished Cryptonomicon. Reviewed same. Felt very much at peace.

Awoke early and spent time before work visiting with Student Life people, or that was the plan, but they were all out to lunch for Mike McKenna’s going away. Meeting about the web site redesign that was interesting. Fun in the office, followed by dinner at Olive Garden and Shrek 2 with Aaron and Nat.

Hmm…today. Watched the Tony Awards. Yeah, that’s about it.