I Am Crazy Excited About This New Storage Technology

HOORAY DATA DENSITY! The specific density of this new technology is about 2.7GB per square inch, and they're calling it "rainbow technology", because data is encoded and printed as colored geometric shapes. Because the information is printed, it takes no special media like CDs or DVDs; you can use plain, white paper which is, of course, biodegradable and cheaper than current alternatives. You can store 256GB on a sheet of A4 (8.3 × 11.7in). In one demonstration, "432 A4 pages of paper [were] rainbow format-encoded and stored on a two-inch by two-inch square of paper."

Right away, I'm seeing two possible limitations: optical discs like CDs and DVDs only have to read highs and lows on an imprinted disc, while a Rainbow Versatile Disc (RVD) reader would have to recognize a myriad of shapes and colors. Also, writing to this medium would require ink, introducing a second cost into the use of this technology.

As for the first problem one article says, "The extremely low-cost technology will drastically reduce the cost of storage and provide for high-speed storage as well", so maybe I'm totally wrong on that one. I was worried about the size of the reader required, but Sainul Abideen the 24-year-old student who developed this technology has also developed the reader which will be sized for laptops and after further miniaturization, smaller devices like cell phones and PDAs which would be able to read 5GB off of SIM card sized RVDs (I just checked, and I'm thinking that would have to be a double sided card).

I'm already having techno-wet-dreams about this new storage technology. Things like cleaning out my Magic binder to store data printed onto pieces of cardboard, and binding server backups into hardback book covers and putting then on my bookshelf next to titles by William Gibson, Cory Doctorow, and Charles Stross. And you know since data is printed, the recorder will also be able to print graphics and labels onto the media. This technology seems like it would be very easy to replicate, so I'm imagining readers and media in every shape and size. Cereal boxes could have special squares on the side with computer games parents could cut out for their kids. Game magazines could do away with demo discs. If I have to transport "for your eyes only" information, I could print a teensy little decal which I would stick onto my thumbnail. Text books would no longer have to come with those annoying CDs in the back that make it hard to flip through the pages. When you buy a paper book the digital version could be included, printed in the back cover. The media could be so cheap I don't know if RVD-RW will be necesary, but if it was I bet White-Out Brand would make a killing.

All those ideas only took me a few minutes, so I know the people who stand to make a profit from them will brainstorm thousands more. I need to stop writing and try to get my heart rate back down.

Oh, yeah, here are my two resources:
http://www.techworld.com/storage/news/index.cfm?newsID=7424
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4&section=0&article=88962&d=18&m=11&y=2006

Haven't Posted In A While; Got A New Job

Wolverine

I hate that MySpace is my only source, but I found out Hugh Jackman is producing and staring in a new Wolverine movie. I still think Jackman is too much of a cleancut nancy boy to play Wolverine, but I honestly don't know who would do better. Here's the body of the message I saw:

Wolverine Machine
Hugh Jackman gets the X-Men spinoff in gear.
by Steve Head @ IGN.com
October 30, 2006
Slowly but surely, Wolverine is coming together. According to star and producer Hugh Jackman, if all goes to plan, fans can look forward to seeing Wolvie in his first solo, big screen adventure in late spring of 2008.



"That's kind of what we're looking at right now," Jackman tells IGN. "A summer release would be great though. Perhaps that's possible. But some things still need to fall into place."

The first element that needs to fall into place is the screenplay. And the word from Jackman is screenwriter David Benioff "has delivered, big time. We now have the final script, the final draft, which I absolutely love. For me, it's the most superior of them all. I know the fans are going to go crazy for it."

Jackman and his producing partners inquired with a few screenwriters and considered story proposals. Inevitably, they were sold by Benihoff's knowledge of X-Men lore and enthusiasm for the Wolverine movie.



"Here's a guy who's this amazing writer, probably one of the hottest writers going in town; Spielberg and everyone are after him," says Jackman. "But he was beating down our door to make this movie because he's the most passionate Wolverine fan. He's followed all of the books since he was 9-years-old. For us, it's one of those rare combinations where you have a writer who has all these Oscar-winning directors wanting to work with and he's like, 'I want to do Wolverine!'"

As Jackman was working on The Prestige and other projects, he stayed in periodic contact with Beinhoff as he wrote the script.

"With someone like David, you mostly let him do his thing and he comes back with the script," he says. "He'd deliver a draft, we'd sit down together and talk about it. And I'd let him know what I think. If I think so, I'll say 'It's fantastic.' Or, 'We may have to go in this direction.' Or, 'What about this?' He's very collaborative."

Having played Wolverine for three films, Jackman says he was able to bring his unique perspective to the script.

"For better or worse, I've played the role for three movies so it's a character that I know. I feel like I know what I want to achieve with the film, but David has been very collaborative, and I'm not shy in telling him what I think. He'll say I disagree with you or whatever. But it's been a really terrific process so far."



What Jackman wants for Wolverine is this: "I don't want the film to appear at all like X-Men 4 in disguise. I want it to feel like a very fresh, whole new character piece. I want it to be a character movie. And by the end of the movie, I want it to be that you definitely knew who this guy was. Cool action, great characters, but ultimately that you totally know who Wolverine is. Like Mad Max and Dirty Harry. Characters I loved. He's a good guy, but he's not a nice guy. He's just the guy you want on your side. [David] really got that. He's one of the best character writers in Hollywood. He totally got it."

The next essential element is working Wolverine into Jackman's schedule. As the star and producer, he knows it will be a huge time commitment - probably three to four months of photography, some of which may take place in Australia, then considerable post-production.

"I'm shooting a movie with Baz Luhrmann and Nicole Kidman next year in Australia, and then we plan to do Wolverine after that."

And let's not forget about a director. "That's our next goal," says Jackman. "Now we have to find a director, which we're looking for now. If I see you guys maybe in about a month, I might be able to let you know who the director is. We're close."

In Your Face, Windows Users

I upgraded to the two-day-old newest version of my operating system last night. Guess what it took? Not a couple hundred dollars. I didn't have to massively upgrade my hardware just to experience all of my OS's features. I just typed a few commands in a command prompt. Ah, life is good.

Typing in the Wrong Window Can Be Hilarious

I Feel For You, Bunny Dude

This is a lower quality version. For the really good one go here.

Software You Should Know About: Songbird

"Songbird promises to be the Firefox of media players." —Aaron Boodman, Greasemonkey

Songbird is a Mozilla-based, open source, cross-platform media player. Just watch that video and see how cool it looks. The dude making the video is kind of a dork, which makes the vid even better. The only feature I don't see on the website is ID3 tagging, but it plays all the great formats, including Ogg Vorbis and WMA. My current Linux-only media player doesn't do those. This thing even plays videos, but I'm pretty sure it's not intended to replace your video player. I shudder to think anyone still uses Windows Media Player for music, but if you are, this would be the perfect thing to switch to. (If you are still using WMP, do you realize an entire nation sued Microsoft over that program?)

Um....

Apparently Meat Loaf's Bat out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose was leaked. Pretty good so far. You can tell he's older, and it's weird to hear him do a cover song. Even though it's a cover, his version of "It's All Coming Back To Me" with the so so sexy Marion Raven (whose voice reminds me of Eponine's from the Original Broadway Cast Recording of Les Miserables) is so powerfull and beautiful that it gives me goosebumps over and over. That's Meat Loaf for you, though. I totally recommend this album, especially for the few Meat fans I know. Downloaded or not, I'm buying this album on it's release on October 31.

Dammit, Johnson!

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Birthday Forcast

I love this: ForecastFox's blurb tomorrow reads, "Sunny and delightful". Hope that pans out

Bookmonkeying

I caught up with myself. I'm in slight shock. I've read every book on my Palm Pilot. On top of that, I also finished the paper book I've been carrying around, so I had nothing to read for the last 20 minutes of my bus ride. Tonight, while my tater tots cook, I'm going to have to format and upload another small library. I guess I'll have to read on paper if I don't get anything up fast enough. With the completion of The Romance of Tristan and Iseult, I've also managed to finish all the paper books I've got that aren't in boxes save one: Xenocide. At least it's one I'm looking forward to reading.

Very Exciting News For All Of Us

Guess what happens on October 31, 2006.

If you're cool, you already knew that that's the release date of Meat Loaf's Bat Out Of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose. Yeah, that's right, the Meat's still at it even though he turns 59 on wednesday. I am so damn excited

BAT OUT OF HELL III TO BE RELEASED ON OCTOBER 31, 2006!

Bat Out of Hell III is Meat Loaf’s long-awaited next installement to the most successful rock music series of all time, with the two previous albums selling a total of 45 million around the world! Bat Out of Hell, released in 1977 and produced by Todd Rundgren, is the third best-selling album of all time, with 30 million copies sold worldwide, featuring such Meat Loaf/Jim Steinman standards as “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad,” “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth” and the show-stopping “Paradise by the Dashboard Lights.”

The Steinman-produced Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell, which came out in 1993, sold more than 15 million, with the classic “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” earning Meat Loaf a Grammy for Best Rock Vocal Performance.

Bat Out of Hell III continues the epic saga in grand fashion, with contributions once again from Steinman and Rundgren, and produced by hitmaker Desmond Child. Bat Out of Hell III promises to mark the triumphant return of the Bat Out of Hell franchise, completing this legendary trilogy!"

Julie Bell is the artist that created the cover and imagry to Bat III and helped make Meat's vision a reality! Click out her website at www.imaginistix.com

To pre-order the album, click here

That quote is from here.

Shirt Gallery

I think my closet is starting to resemble an art gallery. Threadless keeps having these $10 shirt sales, and I've fed my addiction with several of these beauties now.

I'm Such A Nerd

I just set things up so that when someone comments on my blog, Blogger will email it to my cell phone. Go ahead, try it.

Appetite

I saw an online ad today for a product that Opera and 60 Seconds say effectively curb your appetite for weight loss, and it only served to remind me that I had been planning on eating some toast.

Dirty Roger Rackham

I think I did this a while back on my old blog, but I don't remember the result.

My pirate name is:

Dirty Roger Rackham

You're the pirate everyone else wants to throw in the ocean -- not to get rid of you, you understand; just to get rid of the smell. You have the good fortune of having a good name, since Rackham (pronounced RACKem, not rack-ham) is one of the coolest sounding surnames for a pirate. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network

Let's Do Lunch

Do you ever randomly decide you want to eat with chopsticks? I do. I've got these nice deep red bamboo chopsticks Anning brought me back from China, so sometimes I'll make a meal just so I can eat it with them. Today's menu: tater tots and ramen with corn and broccoli. Oh, and Goldfish. The Goldfish are going to be tricky.

For All You Halo Dudes

Man Invented Beer, God Invented Weed....

Who do you trust more?

I did something I don't usually do today: I picked up and read a newspaper. What does it take for me to read news on paper? Weed in the headlines.

Very few know this about me, but I'm actually pro legalization of marijuana. Not really because I want to smoke it. I think it's probably pretty overrated. Actually, that's a pretty good explanation of why I think it should be legal. Such a harmless thing being illegal turns a lot of people into criminals who shouldn't be.

I'm not saying it's okay or not okay to smoke weed, but as you can see from the graphic on the right, it sure seems to cause less harm than other perfectly legal recreational activities. The most violent things pot heads are likely to do is accidentally kick a buddy playing hackey sack. Even sports spectatorship is more violent than toking it up.

In Amsterdam where "soft" drugs (weed, hash, 'shrooms) are tolerated, but still not legal, there is a lower percentage of drug addicts than America's plain old alcoholics. But, I'm sure you've heard this all before. I don't really know where I stand on mushrooms. I'm leaning toward legalizing, mainly because they're natural (like weed). I've also heard they're not addictive. I don't quite believe it, but I haven't found anything to the contrary. I'm definitely not interested in trying 'shrooms. I guess if they were legal, it would be a lot easier to know what I'm eating, but there are way too many bad mushrooms in the world for me to trust what whatever some numbnut out of the dorms is selling.

Wiki in the Hizzy

I've begun to notice my reading habits online mirror my reading habits in meatspace. I buy books faster than I can read them and I open links into new tabs waaaay faster than I can read them. I've currently got nine Wikipedia tabs open. Just for kicks, here they are:

• Ringworld
  
• Dyson Sphere
• Dyson Swarm
• Kemplerer Rosette
• Stellar Engine
• Jupiter Brain
• Astroengineering
• Megascale Engineering
• Kardashev Scale

I know Wikipedia isn't the most accurate or trustworthy resource, but ya know what? Virgins don't give a fuck.

Favoritest

I have a new favoritest book ever. It's called The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and I read all 256 pages in only three days. I don't know if that's a lot or not, but it sure seemed like it to me. The book I'm reading now, Ringworld, isn't going nearly as fast.

I really wish I'd read this book back in high school. Or, better yet, middle school. I know I couldn't have related to it in the same way I now can, but I think it might have made a profound change in my school experience.

Beta is Betta

I'm digging Blogger Beta. This post is actually just to test some of the new options I've set.

Badass Imperial Eagle

I need this image somewhere online so I can put it in a sewing forum and see how the hell you do something like this. This is my new shirt from Edward Dada. I knew there would be negative repurcussions from working retail; I'm becomming a designer whore. Calvin Klein jeans, Fossil wallet, shirts from Report, Blue Marlin, Blend, and Edward Dada. *sigh*

Pour a Shot For Homies No Longer With Us

It's a beginning and an end. A new era of Rodney-blogging on Blogger Beta, and the end of our beloved Steve Irwin. As I'm sure you already know, The Crocodile Hunter died yesterday at the age of 44 after a sting from a giant sting ray to the heart.

I'm crazy busy lately, but this new Blogger Beta thing has got me kind of excited so I'm going to try posting more often. I'll have to get things all pretified on the new page soon.

A Taste of Happy

I met a girl at A Taste of Colorado last night. That makes Rodney a happy boy.