Except Verizon forgot two things – newspaper printing isn’t very good or very consistent from one run to the next, and there really should be a reason, a story, a message for the 3D effect., Nevertheless Verizon paid big bucks for the glasses, the insertion, and the full page color ad. If I had any I’d sell my Verizon stock, this company is run by idiots.
Some movies like Clash of the Titans have given 3D a bad name and reminded people of the trash that was served up in the late ‘50s which evolved, or maybe oozed, into porn. The 2D to 3D conversion is the great hope for bringing lots of 3D content to the TV. But do we want to see I Love Lucy in stereo?

The TV set makers are investing zillions in building 3D ready TVs. Blu ray discs are being pressed, some content is being converted, and games are being developed. It’s all a big rush to the “If you build it they will come,” based on an unshakable faith in the technology and the thirst of the consumer. But, if the watering holes get polluted with stupid promotions like Verizons, and insulting movies like the Titans the hungry consumer will get bad taste in their mouth and turn their back on the whole concept.
We need a new level in reviews. The movie, TV, and game critics – the dwindling few who actually get a paycheck for what they do and have syndication, need to learn about 3D – but just a little. They just need to know what to call the artifacts (like ghosting) and then they need to apply their well honed critical eye and sensibilities to the content.
A review should read like this: “The story was OK, the actors pretty good, but the stupid gratuitous 3D effects ruined all that.”
A few intelligent reviews that don’t pander to the cliché of “goofy glasses” would do wonders for reining in the exploiters and concept killers in the movie-making, publishing, and TV business.

I love stereo. I always have ever since I first saw it in the movies and then professionally in aerial photography looking for, well.. that’s another story.
I want everyone to enjoy it as much as I enjoyed Toy Story 3. It adds to the experience and the fun and can excite the viewer and entice him or her to go to the movies or watch it on TV or play a game with it – and even pay a premium for the experience. Let’s not cheapen it with amateur and poorly done stuff made purely for the sake of being able to say its 3D.
Epilog
It occurred to me we may be in the realm of 3D the same as we were when color came to the movies, then TV and then the PC; rampant, extravagant, misuse of it for effect and without regard to the content. We got past that with color; will we be as lucky with 3D?

I have friends who come home from work, flop in a chair and watch sitcoms like Earl, The Office, and Two and a Half Men.

They are unwinding from a hard pressure filled day.

I’m sympathetic, and whereas I don’t have the 45 to 90 minute commute each way, I do start early and am in need of a diversion and relaxation by the evening – so I go exploring the marshes of Zaton looking for artifacts and trying to avoid anomalies

I know some guys who can’t wait for the weekend so they can go fishing. They get on a boat and go out into the bay and sit there drinking beer with their poles hanging out.

I like to spend a few hours on the weekends shooting wild dogs, mercenaries, climbing into underground tunnels looking for ammunition, and trying to find helicopters that have crashed mysteriously.

There are people who love to sit in the stands of the ball park drinking beer, eating hot dogs and nachos, it costs them about $100 to $150 for that kind of entertainment and it lasts for about two maybe three hours.

I spent $50 and have been exploring for over 25 hours with no real end in sight, and I’m only on the basic level, as I learn the way and the dangers I’ll move up to an experienced Stalker.

My reflexes and peripheral vision are getting so sharply tuned I can empty a 20 load clip dropping five mercenaries in less than two seconds – and I’m an amateur.

I know a gal who drinks a couple of beers, OK several beers at night while watching TV and she tells me about the three shows she watches at the same time: a movie, a travelogue, and something educational, she says.

She says she’s learned how to spot the pauses and knows just when to switch, but she keeps a second window open on one of the other channels as a check to make sure she doesn’t miss anything important.

I have a glass of wine or two, or three, and hunt for needed medkits to repair the damage from the hit I took from the wild bores or the undetected anomaly.  When I’m healed I look for dead soldiers and rob them of their ammunition, food, and radiation treatment drugs.

How is it any less valid to explore a virtual world and interact with it than it is to be passive and let someone else lead you through a story?

My pals like to get together on a weekend and watch a game. They yell together, high five and fist bang each other, pass beers to one another and have a great time being together swapping stories and belching.

In Pripyat where I hang out you have no friends; every living thing, many dead things that are still walking around, the weather, the emissions, and even the radioactive ground are your constant enemies.

You can’t count on anything except that dropping your guard gets you killed faster than you can say, what the hell was that?

Every day some of my neighbors go down to the ferry, ride it, get off, walk to their office, go in it and reverse the process eight or ten hours later – they have just about worn a trench in the path they take day after day after week after year…

I can’t find a path in the marshes of Zaton, there are five hundred paths in Jupiter, and more alleys, tunnels, ladders, roofs, streets, and doorways than I can, or dare, count. Nothing stays the same, things get blown up, emission distortions confuse you and often kill you, there is no path, no routine, no regularity. And yet, I keep coming back, like the cat that’s going to get killed for its curiosity I have to see what’s in that abandoned warehouse, which I know probably really isn’t abandoned and just filled with people and/or things who want me dead so they can steal my ammunition and medkits.

I go into bars and sell weapons I’ve taken from dead guys and use the money to buy passage to another place, hoping life will be better there, but it never is. OK, sometimes it is, but it doesn’t last long and soon I’m looking for bodies to scavenge so I can sell more stuff and buy anti radiation drugs.

I admit it, I am a Stalker, I’m not always proud of it, but I’d rather hunt and be hunted than sit passively and watch inane comedies, or vein-popping news stories. We all need to unwind, maybe pursue our hobbies. My hobby right now is Pripyat, drop in some time – you’ll hate it.

The Screen. Apple’s iPad features a 9.7″ 1024 × 768 LED-backlit, IPS (In-Plane Switching) TFT LCD display. IPS has two transistors instead of one (per pixel), which lead some to believe that they are less batter-friendly. The IPS display has a very wide, 178° viewing angle; which allows the user to hold it almost any way they want, and still get a bright clear picture. However, is not a wide aspect ratio display (i.e., not 16:10 nor 16:9), but rather 4:3. That is, in our opinion, a good choice for cost, power consumption, and overall usage allowing the display to be used (and look good) for books, magazines and newspapers (the screen provide a high resolution 132 pixels per inch) and still satisfy the requirements for video and gaming. Apple says the iPad uses “arsenic-free display glass” (which is now standard from Corning) and a “mercury-free LCD display” (which is one of the benefits of LED backlights).

The touch. Apple claims the iPad has the largest capacitive multi-touch display, with “thousands of sensors” to provide the same touch sensing accuracy that the iPod Touch and iPhone have. The front surface of the display is coated with a “fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating,” which was introduced in the iPhone 3G S.

The chip. The system on a chip (SoC) application processor (AP) in the iPod, which has been revealed to be labeled “A4” was designed by Apple’s in-house team which includes former members of PA Semiconductor and some notable people from ATI and AMD now working at Apple.

We believe that design includes a 1 GHz ARM Cortex A9 processor, and Imagination Technologies SGX 535 (see TechWatch vol.10 No.2, page 2) graphics core, and is being fabricated for Apple by Samsung.

The Tinkerer’s Masterpiece or The Wonderful “Computer & Display”: A logical Story

Have you heard of the wonderful Computer & Display,
That was built in such a logical way,
It ran millions of hours to a day
And then of a sudden it – ah, but do stay,
And I’ll tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the user into fits, –
Frightening people out of their wits,
Have you ever heard of that, I say?

It was back in nineteen hundred and eighty five
When Dell and HP came alive
Snuffy old drones from the IT hive
Had no way of knowing how it would play
Or that there’d be a terrible Meltdown-day
Or that the tinkerer finished the Computer & Display

Now in the building of PCs, I tell you what,
There’s always a weakest spot,
In hub, display, in keyboard, or a grill
In panel or crossbar, or floor or a fill
In screw, bolt, cross brace, — or lurking still
Find it somewhere you must and will
Above or below, or within or without,
And that’s the reason, beyond a doubt,
That a chassis breaks down, but doesn’t wear out

But the tinkerer swore (as tinkerers do,
With an “I do swear,” or an “I’ll tell you”)
He would build a Computer & Display to beat the town,
‘n’ in the country ‘n’ all the country round,
It should be so built that it couldn’t break down
“Fer,” said the tinkerer, “’tis mighty plain
“That the weakness place must stand the strain;
In such a way ta fix it as I maintain, is only jest,
To make that place as strong as the rest,

So the tinkerer inquired of all while on the road
Where he could find the strongest of code
That couldn’t be split, nor bent, nor bowed
That could be used for OS, and apps and APIs
He sent for a wafer maker to build the die
The crossbars were fast, that let the data fly
And the power was the best of supply
With a disk that whose capacity was really high

The hubs were of titanium
Last of their kind, they couldn’t sell em
Never no head had seen their discs
And the wedges flew from between their lips
Their blunt edges frizzled like celery-tips
Case and brace bolt and screw
Spring, motor, axel, and linchpin too
Steel of the finest, bright and blue
Perfect leather covering, thick and wide
Top, side, and front from old hide
Found in the pit when the tanner died
That was the way he built her through
“There!” said the tinkerer, “Now she’ll do.”

Do! I tell you, I rather guess
She was a wonder, and nothing less
Women had babies, and breads turned gray
the tinkerer and his friends died away
Children and grandchildren – where were they?
But there stood the stout old Computer & Display

Years came and went and it could be found
the tinkerer’s masterpiece strong and sound
Nineteen eighty came and increased by ten
Generation Y they called it then.
Nineteen ninety and ten more came
It was running as usual, much the same
Two thousand at last did arrive
And then came two-thousand and zero five

Little of all we value here
Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year
Without both feeling and looking queer.
In fact, there’s nothing that keeps its youth,
So far as I know, but a tree and truth.
(This is a moral that runs at large;
It’s yours -no extra charge.)

FIRST OF NOVEMBER, — the Meltdown-day,
There are traces of age in the Computer & Display,
A general flavor of mild decay,
But nothing local, as one may say.
There couldn’t be, — for the tinkerer’s art
Had made it so like in every part
That there wasn’t a chance for one to start.
For the discs were just as strong as the grills
And the floor was just as strong as the sills,
And the panels just as strong as the floor,
And the power supply neither less or more,
And the back-crossbar as strong as the fore,
And the spring and CD tray and hub encore.
And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt
In another hour it will be worn out!

First of November, half past five
This morning the user turns on a drive.
Now, small cats get out of the way!
Here comes the wonderful Computer & Display,
Booted up by a rat-tailed, CD bay.
“Ctrl-alt-delete!” the user said and off went they.

The user was working his latest text, –
Had got to 125, and stopped perplexed
At what the — Moses — was coming next.
All at once the discs stood still,
Close by the coffee-house on the hill.
First a shiver, and then a thrill,
Then something decidedly like a spill, –
And the user was sitting on his sock,
At half past nine by the coffee-house clock, –
Just the hour of the meltdown shock!

What do you think the user found,
When he got up and stared around?
The poor old chassis in a heap or mound,
As if it had been to the mill and ground!
You see, of course, if you’re not a dunce,
How it went to pieces all at once, –
All at once, and nothing first, –
Just as bubbles do when they burst.

End of the wonderful Computer & Display.
Logic is logic. That’s all I say.
As if it had been to the mill and ground!
You see, of course, if you’re not a dunce,
How it went to pieces all at once, –
All at once, and nothing first, –
Just as bubbles do when they burst.

End of the wonderful Computer & Display.
Logic is logic. That’s all I say.

With apologies and gratitude to Oliver Wendell Holmes.

The Deacon’s Masterpiece or The Wonderful “One-Hoss Shay”: A Logical Story
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)
“Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay…”

http://www.legallanguage.com/resources/poems/onehossshay/

How many of you have heard about the SETI program, or the Folding at Home project? These are programs that have seemingly unlimited need for compute cycles. And as most of you know, we have cycles to spare in our multiprocessor,  multi GHz PCs, especially when we’re not sitting in front of them which is at least 50 percent of the day. So those unused cycles can be farmed out to projects like SETI and FAH and instead of just sucking power can make a contribution that could lead to great discoveries that could benefit all of mankind.

If we can contribute CPU cycles, why can’t we collect them? Large online retailers like Amazon. eBay, and others offer server services – you can buy CPU time for a fraction of what it would cost you to setup one for yourself. The idea of the cloud as the computer is manifested in this concept, and many companies that are not running their server plants at full capacity 24/7 farm out time. For instance, HP farms out cycles to DreamWorks when DreamWorks has a crunch to get some rendering done.

What if all the server farms of the world were made available like a giant electrical grid? What if instead of upgrading your PC every other year for a fraction more of GFLOPs you could instead just call on the cloud to crunch whatever it was you needed processed? You may already be doing this and not know it.

When was the last time you clicked on Help in a Microsoft program? Try it with your computer not connected to the net. Chances are you won’t get any help and instead you’ll get a message that says

That’s actually a good thing because what Microsoft is also doing, with your permission, is collecting information about your usage and problems. Some of that data gets fed back into MS’s help database as do other discoveries about the interaction of the dozens of subprograms that lurk under the skin of a simple word processing program like Word.

Now lets take the example of a massive spreadsheet with dozens of solver programs and macros running. It doesn’t take much to drag down your 3.2 GHz quad core with a big problem of multivariant simultaneous solutions or dozens of matrix tables trying to best fit a nearest neighbor problem. But suppose you could upload the problem (quickly) and it parsed itself (magically) and distributed the problem to available processors in the cloud? It’s an easy model to conceptualize, and before you start playing junior engineer and tearing it apart with the “what abouts…” just consider the idea and how life would change if it was done. Now, while your mind is open, let’s give you one more shock – it’s going to happen, it’s already happening, and it will probably happen without you knowing or caring about it anymore than you knew or cared about the water pipes that were put in to your new subdivision before you moved in.

One of the primary enablers of this brave new world will be banks and banks of GPU-based server clusters. That makes ATI and Nvidia the equivalents of GE and Westinghouse when distributed electricity began in the 1880s.

And, it doesn’t mean that we’ll have ridiculously thin client terminal or dumb net/smartbooks, the PC that know and love, take with us on trips and vacations will still be part of our persona. It just means that we won’t be limited by it. The PC, our personal companion, will have a very – VERY big brother in the cloud to call on when the need arises.

There’s another example of the cloud being the invisible server and that’s our mobile phones – our other personal companion, our silicon sibling. In the very near future, like months away, you’ll be able to use the camera in your phone for augmented reality applications like translation services, and GPS augmentation. This is no news flash or science fiction scenario. But the work isn’t going to be done in your little pocket warmer; rather your handheld device will be what it was originally designed to be – modem – a network interface device. The idea is exciting, and already being realized in some senses.

Early this year we visited a museum in Barcelona with an old pal and while wondering around he called up on his Blackberry Wikipedia to “augment” the information on a painter we were interested in. He was able to get more information for us than we could from the exhibit and it truly did augment our experience. But he didn’t have that information in his Blackberry (and yes, there is a pocket WikiReader – see http://www.jonpeddie.com/reviews/comments/wikipedia-in-your-pocket/ ) rather he called on a few dozen servers to get it, and he was able to go to specialized web pages that were specifically dedicated to explaining and extolling the artist.

Don’t take this concept to ridiculous extremes and assume we don’t need more CPU cycles, and sell all your ARM and Intel stocks short. You know that isn’t true. But it may slow down the upgrade process.

There are still many grand problems like weather modeling that would use 1.7 million x86 processors to carry out the 10 petaflops required to simulate Earth’s atmosphere at cloud-resolving resolution. So we’ll keep building super computers and we’ll keep putting more powerful laptop in our briefcase and desktops in our offices, and at the same time our computing capability will go up by magnitudes as the cloud is engaged.

And then when that happens our PCs will get really intelligent, they will anticipate our needs, and not make us do stupid things like having to mouse up to a ribbon bar to select a function and then select an item and then verify that’s what we wanted. (Some programs like Autodesk’s Inventor do this now my having a dialog box with task-associative functions come up where you are working.)

With enough bandwidth and little to no latency we could evolve to a thin hardware client that did all its work in the cloud, and just required a light software client. You can get a sense for that with Google office apps. Another example is TV, there’s a thin client that uses the network to deliver content, and we interact with it.

So since we’re not all going to dig our own wells for water, install our own generators for electricity, or put septic tanks in our apartments, why is it so far-fetched to envision a generator in the cloud that has more computer power than we could ever afford to buy, and we can tap into it an pay for it on a usage basis as we do now for telephone, gas, water, and electricity? Why isn’t compute just another utility?

However, processing power (measured in billions of operations per second – BOPS) does not equal thought, reason, emotion, or imagination. That sort of equivalence is still out in the future –but the potential is there. No, computers will not be human brains in 2012 or 2013, but they will perform astonishingly well – and fast. Most of the population won’t notice; the power and performance will evolve and we will adapt to it. But here’s the question, will it be good or bad for the human race?
The Singularity
Vernor Vinge introduced the concept of the technological singularity in 1982 and suggested that the creation of machines smarter-than-human intelligence represented a breakdown in our ability to model the future and named this event “the Singularity” in an analogy to how then-current models of physics broke down when they tried to model the gravitational singularity at the center of a black hole. In 1993, Vernor Vinge associated the Singularity more explicitly with I. J. Good’s intelligence explosion, and tried to project the arrival time of Artificial Intelligence using Moore’s Law, which came to be associated with the “Singularity” concept thereafter. Some prominent technologists such as Sun Microsystems founder Bill Joy, has voiced concerns over the potential dangers of the Singularity, which were expressed in a Wired article in 2000. Ray Kurtzweil has adopted the concept as his own and he eloquently speaks about, and has formed an institute to develop AI to take advantage of the human-like capabilities of processors. His view is very positive.

When discussed visions of the Terminator are brought up, and occasionally I Robot (so far, that’s not the name of a new Apple product.)

Most of the research being done on the singularity is being done in robotic labs and AI labs. Their results show up from time to time and delight and scare the pants of people.
It’s coming, you won’t know when
My thesis is it will happen, initially it will be good, and maybe for the most part will always be good.

The singularity is based on artificial intelligence (AI.), and there is a basic test for AI. As the singularity penetrates our lives, every day we will be engaged in Turing tests with our computers. Dr. John Turing, the father of modern computer design postulated the singularity and AI in 1950 when he proposed a test to determine if a human could detect it was communicating with a computer.

Today humans are given visual tests by web sites to determine if the site is being engaged by a human or a computer robot (known as a bot.) The visual test, known as a captcha consists of five to seven scrambled and misaligned letters typically on a confusing background. Humans have superior object recognition capabilities and can decipher the captchas while the bots are defeated. But the bots are getting better all the time (due to their human developers making use of improved computing power) and the protectors of sites that use captchas are in a constant struggle with them. Soon the humans will lose to the bots and yet another corollary to the Turing test will be passed.

Our cars are getting more intelligent all the time. The car’s suspension systems, breaks, and interior climate control manage the car better than we can. Cameras are being installed that will look at the road and cars in front of us and very soon the actual driving of the car at maximum highway speed will be taken over. Cars will be able to drive faster and closer together giving the existing roads more carrying capacity and us shorter travel time. The remaining gasoline powered cars will get better MPG.

Our ubiquitous personal companion with its myriad ways of communication, cameras, location, and motion sensing capabilities will place us on earth within a meter or less of where we actually are. That will help us find our way and things important to us, and it will make us findable.

The camera in our mobile device combined with its own very powerful computer and scores of astoundingly powerful computers in the network affectionately known today as “the cloud” will translate signs and menus, identify historical objects like buildings and statues, give us the information and history of those objects and notify friends (and maybe government agencies) where we are and even what condition we are in (are we standing, prone, drunk, in danger?) It will sense our heath, measure our blood pressure and level of excitement (or anxiety), and report that. Our car’s motion and speed will be sensed and used for traffic management, and enforcement. And we will capture everything we see from birthdays and weddings to robberies and police brutality. We will be constantly in touch with each other, and constantly monitored by super fast super intelligent systems – we will approach another type of singularity – a combinatorial intelligence which is multiplier.

To the clingers of the status quo these developments will be frightening and they will push back against them through lobbyists, blogs, and votes, and road side bombs but they will lose just as the Luddites, candle makers, and tobacco consumers lost.

Physical robots will build better cars (than they already do) and other products, including pharmaceuticals, become companions to children, the elderly and incapacitated, and join the ranks of first responders to emergency and dangerous situations.

And, ultimately warriors; they almost already have in the form of UAVs autonomous vehicles.

And yes, the machines will build other machines.

As the computers pass the basic BOPS equivalence of the human brain and move into advanced AI, in both stationary and ambulatory systems they will take over law enforcement, government management and most commerce. Just as ATMs were first suspicious devices and people worried about giving their money or ID to a machine, advanced AI systems will become integrated into our lives in such a ubiquitous way that our children and their children will grow up not knowing any difference and not caring.

And at that threshold, approximately 2020, great discussions, debates, philosophic arguments will arise about the probable and possible consequences of super AI running our world. Will the machines, which will all be in total communications with each other, reach sentience and evaluate the value and contribution of humans – and then make decisions about that? Or will they become our benefactors as we are of lower life forms? Will machines with sentience also have a soul, compassion, and a sense of beauty and wonder? Will an advanced AI be capable of being surprised? And if surprised find joy in it or find it threatening?
The back door and Asimov

All computer systems, hardware and software to date have had a “back door” built in them; it’s a way to break in and stop or fix an errant machine. It is presumed by many that such a philosophy of construction will continue and we, someone amongst us, will be able to stop the machines. But that also presents a problem, just as computer viruses and worms do today – can the back door be compromised by the wrong people – by the machines?

Isaac Asimov, also anticipated the singularity and considering these issue and in 1942 came up with the laws of robots. The DNA if you will that would be embedded in all AI, and that is required for the AI to obtain sentience. Of course, then his subsequent novels started playing with the idea of robots circumventing the first laws.

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Like it or not we as a civilization are on a course much like all the world’s early explorers, we don’t really know where this trail will take us and what dangers and/or rewards await us. But unlike the early explorers we have no choice, we are committed to the trail, we can’t, and don’t for the most part want to stop. The promise of better lives, better medicine and longer lives, and a rich conflict free future calls to us and we have to see what’s over that next hill – that’s what makes us human.

Reference
In 1997 Hans Moravec at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, PA, calculated the human brain to have the quivilance processing capacity of 100 million MIPS – or 100 TIPS (tera instructions per second.) and predicted we would have home PC before 2030 with that capability. http://www.transhumanist.com/volume1/moravec.htm

In 1999 in his seminal book, The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human
Intelligence. [Viking], Ray Kurzweil calculated that, the human brain consists of 100 billion neurons linked into 100 trillion connections, each capable of a simultaneous “calculation”, i.e. transmitting or blocking an impulse. Each connection is capable of 200 such calculations per second, hence the total processing power of the human brain is about 20 million billion calculations per second.

If you allow that a human brain claculation is equivilant to computer calcualtion, or floating point operation per second known as a FLOPS, then the human brain has the equivilance of 20 x 1015 FLOPS, or 20 PetraFLOPS.

In 2009 the Roadrunner system at DOE’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) which was built by IBM hit 1.1 PFLOPS or 1.1 x 1015 FLOPS.

The current linear projection on a log scale for reaching 20 PFLOPS is approximately 2013. However, that does not include the impact of the massive parallel processing GPUs.

That’s a lot, I usually can read four or five pages before I fall asleep. So that meant I’d have to have four or five reading sessions between naps if I was going to do this. This was going to eat up a lot of the day for me, depending on how long each nap took. I reasoned the last four or five pages I read could be at night (as they usually are) before I had my major sleep. But then I worried that if I was napping four or five times a day trying to read my requisite 21.23 pages I probably wouldn’t be so sleepy and maybe I could read more pages before I nodded off. Clearly this was going to take some serious empirical research and so I decided to keep a log in a notebook. Then I thought I might lose the notebook so I decided to simply make notes on the Kindle.

I started on July 1st, I chose July because things are slow for me in July business-wise, the recession helped a bit, and July had 31 days giving me an edge of one day if I needed it (that, I calculated would only represent a 3.3% cheat which can be attributed to a reasonable margin of error, or so I convinced myself.

The first day I read 15 pages and took six naps and slept a full normal night. I was already behind, but since I was planning on a five day reading week, I had some buffer time to catch up if needed. The second day I got to 20 pages, still six naps and a pretty good, not great night’s sleep – the bottle of wine probably contributed to some of the restlessness.

Now I was getting into the swing of the day I covered 30 pages and again six naps, but I was almost at par. The fourth day I hit 32 pages, six naps and a good night’s sleep. I was on a roll, I was going to do this in under 30 days, I could feel it.

I skipped the fifth day, some work came in and I had to attend to that. Stayed up a little too late, had three glasses of wine, and a big meal. It was a restless night and I vowed to be good the next day – a lie I’ve told myself several times, and sometimes I actually manage to do it.

Day six was difficult. I kept getting distracted, took four naps and over read 10 pages. The book was not as interesting as I had hoped (“Quantum Ethics,” by Keith Ellis.) It had too super a super hero, too long, stretched-out, fight or flight scenes and ridiculous dialogs, and a satellite that could see into buildings and read the numbers on a credit card – oy. But I vowed to carry on, I can do this I told myself as I fell asleep.

Day seven I was dedicated. I drank several cups of coffee, read 25 pages and only napped twice. Sleeping that night was more problematic and when I woke at 02:00 (which would be day eight I decided to read in order to fall asleep, which I did as the sun came up at 5:30 – but I had read 29 pages, I was almost caught up again.

Now in the interest of full disclosure I will say that I have not fully read every word of the 161 pages. The story is tedious and so I’d skip through some paragraphs because they were self indulgent drivel that maybe the author thought was interesting or exciting, but I found to be stupid comic book like adventure tripe. The only thing missing was a the sound effect words “Pow,” and “Kapow” as the super hero threw super one punch knockout blows against the bad guys.

I was on day seven and 37% of the way through the book. If I just concentrated, watched my diet and drinking (coffee or wine) I could read this book in 30 days. But it was getting harder. On day eight I found myself staring at the wall, awake, thinking about – nothing, or at least nothing I could recall. The book was so boring my mind just tuned out. However, to my astonishment I had covered 33 pages. That deserved a reward so I had cheese and salami and a couple of glasses of wine, did my chores and went to bed with the book. I got through five pages before I dropped the Kindle on the cat and woke up enough to turn out the light.

On day nine I thought I’d never finish this damn book, and quite frankly I didn’t care. If you’re going to read a book in 30 days it should at least hold your interest and be reasonably well written. Now the super hero who can move through the woods more quietly than smoke had been joined by his ex-Seal buddy who is something like seven feet tall weighs 250 pounds, and is also a super hero who can do stuff, whatever it is, he can do it. God, how did this junk get published, and who the hell is the targeted audience?

I struggled through another 30 pages with the usual intermittent and unplanned or scheduled, but always welcomed naps. Now I was at page 211, over half (barely) way through.

Saved by work, I didn’t have the privilege of reading about the heroine’s latest escape from danger or her super intellectual ability to crack any code in the world, while having the most beautiful legs and bust man had ever seen.

Day 11 was slow and I got to plough through 29 more pages of super escapes from bad guys, mind reading counter moves by the other bad guys – by now the beautiful ultra smart heroine was being chased by the US Army’s Delta force, a secret black force run by the boss of NSA and his sex deranged colonel who likes to rape woman after he’s drugged them and just before they die from his drugs, and some Muslims who wanted to use the heroine’s quantum computer to start WWIII.

I zipped through the next 35 pages on day 12 while the heroine and her protector, the ex-Seal, sent to protect her by the President of the US, manage to elude three helicopters filled with Special Forces. The president of the US seems to do that a lot in these kind of books, know personally some super ex-Seal, or Special Forces guy who has either been drummed out of the service by a corrupt commanding officer, or quit in disgust because of some crooked commanding office – and yet the President never seems to know about those evil/corrupt/incompetent guys.

The next 40 pages (accompanied by five naps a couple of glasses of a fine Merlot), involved the super hero and his giant buddy, moving more quietly and faster through the woods of Virginia than the Special Forces guys and taking out all 36 of them and destroying all three helicopters, while the heroine sped away to her secret cave in a stolen government car. Her now compromised quantum computer was in the secret cave, and she had to either destroy it or get it back. I didn’t much care which, and kinda hoped it’d blow up in her beautiful face.

Only able to read at bedtime on day 14 I was barely able to get through 8 pages of the endless chase scenes and counter moves of the bad guys.

Again work and disgust with the book kept me from engaging with it on day 15. But I was 77% of the way through it, confident of hitting the goal.

So confident I skipped day 16 too.

Back to the chase on day 17 the Heroine had made it to her cave only to be surprised by the Muslims who were waiting for her. I wasn’t surprised, and given that she is the smartest person in the universe I couldn’t understand how she couldn’t anticipate the trap. Within the 36 pages I read that day between the four naps, the super hero’s buddy gets shot and taken by the super hero to a hospital in a stolen Army helicopter complete with missiles and machine guns which the hospital people don’t seem concerned about when he lands on their roof, and oh that’s right, among all his other skills like being able to track anyone or anything in any environment, he also knows how to fly any helicopter he encounters.

Meanwhile back at the cave we learn that the leader of the bad Muslims is the heroine’s former boy friend and that he only became her boy friend because he wanted to learn her secrets about her quantum computer – so much for being beautiful and intelligent.

Day 18 has the super hero sneaking into the heroine’s cave (where she’s being held as a prisoner now and tormented with sexual suggestion including the stroking of her legs and belly with a large knife.) This time the super hero has made a phone call to a guy named Viper who joins him instantly and immediately without any questions, and happens also to be an ex-Special Forces guy who is not a full-fledged super hero, merely a very very good hero – maybe a super hero in training. While Super and very very good hero(s) are sneaking up on the bad Muslims we get the master pans and the speech – I fell asleep after 10 pages.

It was now day 19, and I was reading the speech from the bad Muslim who had the plan to bomb the US with its own nuclear missiles in an un-defendable and surprised manner just as the US had done to him, his countrymen, and family in Iraq. This is a long speech and in it we learn that the US held back a few MX multi warhead missiles from the original SALT agreement and those are the ones the bad Muslims would use on the US.

Just as the bad Muslim presses the final key on the heroine’s quantum computer, and is about the slit the neck of the heroine the super heroes of course move silently in and overcome the Muslims, or almost anyway one of them gets away – the ex boyfriend.

Now the MX missiles are launched and the Muslim’s plans are in motion. The heroine, now freed and still beautiful meets Viper. Viper it turns out is her long lost brother who the super hero was wrongly accused of killing and why the heroine, although “strangely” attracted to the super hero, couldn’t quite accept him. Now it’s revealed that the super hero actually saved the brother (aka “Viper” aka the very very good hero) and so while the MX missiles are gaining altitude prior to their devastating and inevitable plunge back to earth with ten warheads aimed at the 10 largest cities of the US, the heroine decides this is the time for the big kiss with the super hero – it’s a very touching moment. After the kiss, she then decides it’s now time to get her superduper quantum computer which is a zillion times faster than the fastest computer in the world back on –line and under her control so she can penetrate the Air Force computers where she will cause the missiles to abort. That took another 10 pages, and I was getting near my goal.

I took a couple of days off to go visit a client and clean the kitty litter box, both tasks much more rewarding than this idiot book.

On day 22 I switched on the Kindle with new determination and discovered that the Chinese seeing the US MX missile launch immediately assumed it was aimed at them. Now we have a new book – Dr. Strangelove and the Quantum computer. Amusing dialogs among the Chinese military second guessing what the American’s motives are and how to respond, knowing if they do the US will fire back even more missiles and so the Chinese decide what the hell let’s launch all we got at the US and hope for the best. That took 19 pages and gave me a headache.

This was it, I was seven days ahead of schedule, I was now going to read the last 34 pages. Now the Chinese missiles were in the air, ten of them (all they had it turns out – who knew?) each with ten separately targeted warheads based on technology the Chinese stole from the US.

Now the US President is being advised to launch against China, and while at it take out Russia too, once and for all. He doesn’t want to and while he’s debating with his commanders the heroine has managed to snuff out the first salvo of MX missiles. (We presume they fall harmlessly onto farmland and do no damage except maybe set off some car alarms, but that’s just my supposition.) Next she turns her attention to the Chinese missiles and we’re treated with comments about how easy it should since it’s all based on our technology. After too many examples of what she types in that doesn’t work, she finally breaks into the Chinese system and begins the abort process on the Chinese missiles. Only 15 pages to go, can’t wait to see how this ends.

The US president now is goaded into launching against China. No one in China says to the supreme commander, I told you this might happen, so they just stand in front of their consoles and watch the US missiles come in, while they are left defenseless because they sent all they had to the US – much unlike their ability to send us endless quantities of clothing, shoes, and TVs..

And now we get yet another book – now the quantum computer becomes sentient and in so doing tries to abort the US missiles. And it almost succeeds but three manage to hit Chinese targets, and interestingly they are the command centers of the military who launched the Chinese missiles.

But alas the now sentient quantum computer is suffering a broken heart – I am not making this up – and decides to destroy itself.

Peace in our time, the Chinese, and US kiss and make up, the Russians promise to behave, and who knows what the heroine and the super hero are doing in the cave.

But I did it, I read a book in 23 days – Joel will be so proud of me, I couldn’t wait to tell him. But then on a flight to Austin I had to change planes in Denver. Sitting in the Denver to Austin plane for an hour and half at the gate we were informed that although they promised they would, in fact they couldn’t fix the toilet and would we all please get off and got to the next gate over. We did, and got on an identical plane. After the flight finally took off I reached inside my bag to get the kindle out only to discover I had left it on the other plane. But that’s another story…

So I called Joel and told him he was right,. You can read a book in thirty days. There was a long pause, and I could Joel taking a deep breath, Joel by the way is also a life coach. Then with all the patience he could muster, and I do test that patience from time to time, said in that deep baritonic and gentle voice, “No Jon, the title of my book is, “How to WRITE a book in 30 days,” and he hung up.

About Joel Orr. He really has written a book about 30 days, but it’s titled, “Write Your Book in 30 Days.” In it he encourages the reader to write about something that is near and dear to your heart. http://www.lulu.com/content/5964860

There’s more on 30 day books here: http://www.ehow.com/how_4896097_write-book-days.html

About Quantum Ethics. It’s actually a best seller, according to the book sellers. You can read some reviews here: http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Ethics-A-Thriller-ebook/product-reviews/B0018GH32S/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

You may have heard last week that Derek Perez was leaving Nvidia. And you may have heard that it was not a pleasant parting. Well he is and it was.

I’ve been gagged about this and now the gag is off.

Derek Perez is leaving Nvidia and moving to Nashville to become the Chief Marketing Officer of the Nashville Predators, a NHL team.

Derek will be trading in his Nvidia suit for a Predator suit

Derek is ideally suited for this job. In addition to his 13 years at Nvidia in marketing, he studied sports medicine before that (which came in handy about six months ago when he dislocated his collar bone - playing hockey.)

This is close to a dream come trough for Derek and although we’ll miss him, we couldn’t be happier for him.

So bon voyage Derek, and keep your eye on the puck