We had a great Christmas this year, except for being sick. Several of us have come down with bad colds. For me, it’s been about 4 years since I had a bad cold. It seems like I am making up for it now.
Just before Christmas, Kyle and I camped for two nights at Cloudland Canyon State Park. It was cold. At night, it got down to about 20F. We had fun. We built a campfire and cooked all our food on the open fire. We collected water from a crystal clear mountain stream and sterilized it by boiling. We both decided that we were done camping in sub-freezing weather.
Kyle got another guitar for Christmas and some guitar strings. Nicole got a camera, a scooter, and a keyboard stand and stool. They also got Guitar Band for Wii to share.
While browsing the web today, I stumbled upon a free PDF of the journals of Richard Proenneke. Proenneke retired to the Alaska wilderness in 1968 at the age of 52. He built a log cabin by himself and lived in it for the next thirty years. He was an amazing individual. This particular publication contains his journal entries from 1974 to 1980 along with a biography. Proenneke has been featured on television numerous times over the years and there have been two documentaries made about him. Some day, I would very much like to have a similar experience, but not for 30 years. A year or two would suffice for me. Anyway, I am going to start reading the journal. It seems very well written and I am looking forward to getting a more intimate view into his world.
When I woke up this morning, I looked out the window into the back yard and saw a coyote. I think it’s the first wild coyote I have ever seen. It looked to be very healthy.
School started for the kids on Wednesday. Kyle is in the seventh grade now and Nicole is in the fifth grade.
We took a small vacation last weekend to celebrate the end of summer vacation. We went to South Carolina. The girls stayed at Folly Beach while Kyle and I looked for fossils. Summerville South Carolina is well as being a good place to look for magalodon teeth. Unfortunately, Kyle and I only found small pieces of megalodon teeth. But we were able purchase a nice specimen from a local guide.
It was nice being back at the beach. I grew up in Savannah and the Folly Beach area reminded me a lot of were I grew up.
A research team recently discovered that the DNA of individual human brain cells varies from cell to cell. Apparently, there are certain segments of our DNA that can get copied multiple times in our brain cells. In other types of cells, this mechanism is turned off. This seems like a very important discovery. Until now, we thought that the DNA in our cells was relatively static. Now it seems, the DNA of our brain cells is dynamic. This mechanism must serve some purpose, but that has not been discovered yet.
For anyone who has not been following the progress of the Japanese robot industry, this video below might be a bit of a shock. In a decade or two, the humanoid robot industry will be in full swing. Millions of theses robots are going to be sold. The home robot industry may rival the auto industry in size. If I am lucky enough to live into old age, I am sure a descendant of these robots will be looking after me.
Back in 1982 a movie called Tron was released. It was one of the first movies to feature computer graphics. Back in 1982 it was extremely rare to see CG used in movies. The computers simply were not powerful enough. The plot of the movie was specifically designed to help the viewer accept the primitive graphics. The CG was used to bring the viewer inside the computer. It was used to represent programs interacting as avatars. I was a junior in high-school when the movie came out. It influenced my decision to study computer engineering in college. At the time I entered Georgia Tech, there was no computer engineering degree program. So I majored in Electric Engineering with emphasis on computer engineering and high performance/parallel computing. To this day, 27 years later, I think of the movie almost every day. (Yes, I know that’s hard to believe, but it’s true.)
Even though Tron is relatively obscure today (except with computer nerds like me), it is a very significant movie for it’s use of CG and for incorporating computers, computer programs, and computer programmers and into the plot.
In 2010, Disney will be releasing Tron Legacy. It will star Jeff Bridges who will reprise his role (28 years later) as the lead character, Flynn.
Tonight I took Kyle to see the bass guitar player Billy Sheehan. He has played with David Lee Roth and Steve Vai and is a member of the band Mr. Big. He was giving a clinic sponsored by Yamaha at the music store where Kyle takes some of his lessons. He was very entertaining. We had a good time.
I want to plug one of my son’s guitar teachers, Barry Richman. Many people consider Barry Richman to be the best electric guitar player in Atlanta. Please check out his web site (www.barryrichman.com) and buy some of his CDs or go listen to him in person. You can also see some of Barry’s performances on YouTube, however the audio quality of the clips I’ve seen don’t do him justice. You really have to see him in person to understand how amazing he is.