Facebook? What you need is a dog.

Dear Mr SASB: My so-called friends think I’m a loser. Maybe they have a point. I’m  an uncoordinated klutz. I have braces and zits. Still. I’m like “screw them. I’ll just hang out on Facebook where it’s cool”. My old friends? They totally sucked anyway. My dad says this is unhealthy. He says I should check with Mister SASB who considers himself a frugging expert in almost everything. So? Are you cool with this or what? – EmilyKickMe4

Listen,you little pipsqueak, I AM an expert on everything. Everything that matters.

Teenagers aren’t on the list.

So your real friends think you’re a ditz and treat you like a putz. But on Facebook you ARE someone. A new person with a wall of your own. It’s not real life, but who cares? Whatever works.

Let’s look at the science.

Amanda Forest and Joanne Wood wondered about this exact thing. Can you really slip out of your old skin, slip a social network over your bones, and be better off?

The article in Psychological Sciences says no.

If you have an ” I am pathetic” sticker on your personality it will follow you to Facebook and Google+. Low self esteemers can’t stop putting themselves down. Not even in the digital world . Pretty soon their new online pals start to think of them as dweebs just like the flesh-and-blooders did that they thought they had left behind. Bad as real life is, at least, when people find you annoying you can see it on their faces. Not on Facebook. I know what the name says but those “faces” aren’t real. Just pixelated images which don’t give the kind of feedback that is needed.

The article by Forest and Wood implies you shouldn’t run away from your troubles. You should face them. If you are your own worst enemy, don’t try to make it better on Facebook. Get a dog.

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Image credits go to MISTER SASB (our Luna on the left,  her boyfriend, Bailey, on the right).

DON’T BE A STIFF WITH THE KIDS. OKAY?

A fella shows up at his church and says to the priest, Father, I have three things to confess. I didn’t do my penance like you asked me to last week, I didn’t put any money into the poor box today, and I told my kid I don’t have time for his stupid jokes. Well, says the priest, let’s not get bogged down with all the religious stuff when you’re lousing up yer kid’s life!

Not that funny? But, you know what? That priest had a point. According to Dr Elena Hoicka (a developmental psychologist, University of Stirling, Scotland) you need to yuck it up some with your kids.

Seriously!

Here’s the thing.

Hoicks’s work shows it’s important to interact, using jokes and pretending. If you think you’re too much of a stiff to pull this off, there are even tips to help you  loosen up (brandy?).  Knowing how to joke, they say, helps kids make friends, deal with stress, and think creatively.

Does MISTER SASB think this is crazy important science? Is this what Einstein WISHED he could do?

Tell me this. How could it hurt?

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Thanks (again) xkcd for the image:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 Generic License.

In September, Tom Greene, Dave Arnoth, and Robert Hoffman  (Robert Hoffman being Mister ScienceAintSoBad’s first cousin) took these photos of a blue whale about 3 miles offshore near Redondo Beach, CA. They were sailing an F-27 Corsair trimaran, named SEA WING (Fairwind Yacht Club, Marina del Rey).

There are  8,000 to 14,000  blue whales .  They’re big guys (the whales). The largest animals on earth.

THE INTREPID ONES

Credits: Thanks to Tom Greene for the great shots. They were taken using a Canon EOS 30D with 300 mm lens.   Tom, incidentally, retired from the Coast Guard and is a graduate of the Coast Guard Academy.

PATENT OFFICE: EMPTY

A HORRIFYING LACK OF NEW IDEAS

In the modern age, innovation has been one thing we could count on. The flow of new ideas has been torrential. In fact, new systems and devices made innovation easier. We made stuff that made stuff that made stuff. Innovation fed on itself until a trickle turned into a stream turned into an avalanche.

Until recently.

At the beginning of this century ( in FACT, wasn’t it  RIGHT after all the worry about the Y2K clock thing that never happened?) the impulse to innovate faded. The faucet got “plugged up”, says Edgar Biteme, writing for Annals In Global Progress. “It’s hard to understand. After the invention of  Cell-O-Heater,” (cellulite zapping  pad sold on As Seen On TV) ” it’s like the sail collapsed. We’ve been drifting ever since.”

MISTER ScienceAintSoBad doesn’t know if Biteme’s right or not, but it’s a fact that the US Patent And Trademarks Office is empty these days. I was there Monday and  it took 10 minutes to find anyone. Most of the staff were “dialing for dollars”. Pathetic. They were calling up FORMER inventors to see if they might, possibly, have anything new they could send over. The occasional application they do get these days is usually a stupid little change to  an old idea.  One of the examiners, Sam Strichtrich said “Hey. Don’t quote me, okay? But, if a trivial piece of crap application does cross my desk, I’m gonna grant it. We all are.We don’t want to admit how bad things really are.”

I guess I quoted him.

When’s the last time you saw a new technology on store shelves? Same, same, same. Right? The hot industries are the ones that specialize in repainting and repackaging stale products . It’s sad.

There are plenty of theories as to what’s going on.  Biteme, himself, thinks the problem can be traced right back to the educational system which emphasizes the classics – Greek, Latin, and ancient Hebrew. “Nobody,” according to Biteme, “studies engineering, science or, even, business, these days. It’s a big turn off to students who don’t want to be seen as money grubbers.”

MISTER ScienceAintSoBad knows you’re worried. But you shouldn’t be. The age of science and technology was totally exhausting. I could barely keep up with it all. Now I get to kick back and relax.

You too.

– - – - – - – - – - – - – ADDED LATER – - – - – - – - – - –

Mister ScienceAintSoBad has been getting messages from people who liked this article a little bit TOO much.

Let me ask you something. Have you ever told a silly joke and had someone take you seriously and then felt terrible? Hey. Yer car’s on fire! No, no, no. I was just KIDDING! I didn’t mean to scare you?

The article is (or was intended to be) a parody. It’s all made up. I thought (hoped) it would be obvious since we’re drowning in innovation and it’s more or less impossible to keep up with the escalating rate of change.

It’s the responsibility of the writer – MY responsibility – to figure out how to be kinda funny without making the reader feel like a chump. I didn’t quite get there today. Sorry. I accept full responsibility and do not feel you “fell for” anything. I’m not a professional writer. Just an engineer who writes for fun. No intent to deceive. Believe me.

Innovation’s fine. Don’t worry.

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Image: We appreciate the use of the image from Flickr
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License.

THE OVERRATED PHYSICAL KEYBOARD

I MEANT WELL

In November of 2009, I wrote an article (first one of this blog series) about “app phones”. (Smartphones.) At the time, the IPhone was blazing brilliantly through the firmament as Android (Google’s then new Iphone competitor) sat on a rock, watching  wistfully.

MISTER ScienceAintSoBad‘s article was about Google’s (turned out to be successful) Droid app phone. Which has a physical keyboard.

I liked the phone. (Good job, me). For the wrong reason.

My article was about physical keyboards on phones – those  compromis-y fingers-don’t-fit-things that slide under.

In my article,  I clarified, nicely, the concept that I, and only I, “get it” where keyboards are concerned. I explained that physical keyboards mean you don’t have to use up precious screen space which I (not too originally) termed “real estate”. The “soft” (simulated) keyboards that show up on those teeny screens subtract from space you need to SEE what you are editing or writing (said I).

Why nobody ELSE observed this silly mistake on the part of phone innovators, I can’t say. But MISTER ScienceAintSoBad has, as mom used to say, “a real head on his shoulders”.

Doesn’t he?

Strangely, though, for all their supposed advantages, I don’t have a physical keyboard on my own phone.

Isn’t that curious?

Well my mom (same one) used to say (about real estate) that they’re not making any more of it.

Which is true of the ground-y kinda real estate but not so true of the touch – screen-y kind. After all, phones ARE getting bigger. Some of the newer models come with handles on each end so your buddies can help you portage them through the weeds.

Which does make screen “real estate” less of a big deal. Doesn’t it?.

Still. MISTER SASB, at the moment, has a modest screen on his modest Android phone (a Droid Eris) and, yet, even I, feel no need for a clumsy sliding keyboard with clicky keys. So where was I wrong?

SOFT KEYBOARDS  FINE

Here’s where.

First of all, having gotten around to trying them, I gotta say that even the best of those miniaturized keyboards are kinda tough. OK for texting, I suppose, but you won’t be doing your thesis on one.

Bear in mind, I’ve seen teenagers use these things at jet speed without even looking.

But that’s teenagers. I’m not even gonna GO there.  I’m talking about NORMAL people. OK?

Anyway, my real problem is that I was still thinking INSIDE that notorious “box” everyone talks about. I’m a touch typer and I’m used to a physical keyboard on my own PCs. And isn’t an app phone/smartphone a smallish PC?

Well.

Not really. See. That was my mistake.

It isn’t.

Because, with an app phone (and unlike a PC)  you can hold it up to your ear. Or put it in your pocket. Or walk into a sink hole, holding it in front of yer face.

As computers go, app phones are so personal that they’re INTIMATE. They go where you go. And that’s different, isn’t it? So you might use it in the doctor’s office.. Or propped up in bed. Or at the PO-lice station.

Handy indeed.

So popular “apps” tend to emphasize mobility. GPS and maps. Store payments. Casual entertainment and games.

Fart apps are popular.

So why sit straight up on your butt while your writing?

No reason.

COOL (SOFT) KEYBOARDS + SKILLED USERS

I use mine standing, slouching, reclining, and upside down (me, that is). In other words, at times, and in ways, that call for a more innovative approach to inputing information.

And thus (and, at last)  my point.

“Soft” keyboards? More than you can count. There are dozens and dozens – hundreds, actually – available as free and paid apps on the various smartphones. Big keys and small keys. All kinds of key arrangements and even new approaches to typing, itself. One that’s  catching on, involves sliding the finger from key to key. The technique’s hard to describe. Swipe and Slide-It are two keyboards that use this strange but effective approach. At first, it’s seems ridiculous. But, you learn the keyboard, and the keyboard learns you. Gradually, your own vocabulary drains into the thing and your typing speed gets faster and faster. I AM still faster at a full sized keyboard, but I’m surprisingly good, glissading around that Slide-It thing . There’s also a peculiar side benefit. It’s kinda fun.

And do the pop up keyboards REALLY get in the way of what you’re editing, as I claimed in my first review? Well sure. Kind of. But it’s like anything, you get good at making it go away. You can flip yer ‘board up to type and down to look. Up to type and down to look.

It works. It really does.

TALKING INTO YOUR HAND

Why type if you can slide? And why slide if you can dictate?

Seriously. I’ve been using my phone to, for example, to right this article.

right? Did I say right? Well. Not perfect, I admit.

But, like the sliding keyboards, the dictation software which is basic  to the Android phones (but certainly available on other phones) is adaptive. As I have, tentatively, used it more and more for serious writing, I am starting to appreciate the speed advantages of the voice input cycle. You speak a bit, correct the boo boos, and speak some more. You get good at this.It’s faster and easier than it sounds.

(It would have to be.)

A FINAL NOTE

I tried out the “soft” keyboard on the new XOOM tablet  computer . Sliding? Voice recognition? Why would you do that? This is a keyboard that fits your fingers and works great. I haven’t tried the equivalent trick with an IPad but, surely, that’s nice too.

The benefits of ultra-portable, ultra-smart devices are already becoming clear but the best way to talk back at them is  still evolving.

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attribution: Photo belongs to compscigrad’s photostream. License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License.