Brian D. Buckley

As writers, we feel precision is a good thing. Say what you mean! Pick exactly the right word! Don’t be vague!

But precision can be dangerous.

I was at a tech presentation recently. Someone in the audience asked the expert his opinion on a particular new technology. The questioner didn’t know much about it, so he wondered what the expert thought of it.

“What do you want to know about it?” said the expert. “Performance? Flexibility? Useability? Compatibility?”

What the questioner tried to explain, and what the expert never quite understood, is that he didn’t have a specific question about it. What he had was a huge gap in his knowledge about this new technology, which he quite reasonably hoped the expert could fill. But “tell me about this” is vague, and the expert demanded precision. And so their communication died.

Or maybe I’m talking to someone who wants to send me a file, and they ask if they can “download” it to me. Now, download means to pull a file from elsewhere to your own computer, so sending a file out is technically not downloading. Thus the precise answer to his question is very simple: no, you can’t download it to me. But obviously, the precise answer is not the correct answer. The correct answer is to disregard precision, guess the real meaning, and say “Yes, you can send it to me.”

Both my examples have been about computers, and that’s no coincidence. Computers are exquisitely precise, but they don’t do well with vagueness (although they’re getting better rapidly). Vagueness is largely a human virtue: the ability to think about something in a meaningful way, without tying it down to specific details.

But people who are good with computers often think like computers: good at precision, not so good at vagueness. They may be great at handling known unknowns, where the problem is well-defined, but they’re not so good at unknown unknowns, where the problem is that we don’t know what our problems are.

Naturally, there are plenty of people – in IT and elsewhere – who can walk in both worlds, using precision or vagueness appropriately as the situation demands. Because balance, of course, is the key. Too much vagueness is just as bad as too much precision. The great astronomer Carl Sagan was a master of this: his mind was precise enough to get a PhD in astrophysics, but flexible enough to explain the stars to the average person on TV.

Actually, Carl Sagan just rocked in general. If you haven’t seen Contact, check it out sometime.

Anyway. Yes. Precision, vagueness. (Crap, how do I end this? I don’t have a conclusion.)

Uh, yay for communicating!

oh man that was lame

um, uh

STOP READING IT’S OVER

Yes, that kid is me. Yes, the plants are marijuana.

No, I was not enslaved by the Caracas-based drug cartel Los Estornudadores from 1989 to 1993.

As it turns out, the stuff grows wild in the fields of Kansas, where one of my relatives used to have a farm. We were actually pulling it up, trying to get rid of it.

And yes, I was at the forefront of early-90’s fashion, thank you for asking. Anyone can harvest drugs in their spare time, but it takes a special kind of person to wear a neon iguana in public.

The Cube, a personal 3D printer from 3D Systems, Inc.

3D printing is here to stay. Personal 3D printers are already available for non-outrageous prices. And like so many technologies, they’re only going to get better – and cheaper. Already, the low-end models give you 200-micron precision and 16 colors, while the high-end models are printing parts for F-18 fighter jets. Plastics are here; other materials, like metal, are coming.

I don’t have one yet, but I’m sure I’ll buy one when the price goes down a little. But what could you make with a 3D printer?

Here are seventeen ideas off the top of my head:

1. The best Halloween costume ever, custom-designed and perfectly fitted to your body.
2. 3D fractals! Ben, are you listening? 😀
3. Picture frames, exactly the size and shape you need.
4. Jewelry of all kinds: bracelets, necklaces, even rings. Any style you can imagine.
5. A voodoo doll that looks just like the person you want to, er, vent your frustration on. Disbelief in the voodoo is handy for removing ethical complications!
6. Action figures of underappreciated characters.
7. Refrigerator magnets. Go wild.
8. Personalized Christmas ornaments.
9. Miniature replicas of famous places like Westminster Abbey or the Arc de Triomphe, or not-so-famous places (like your own house!).
10. Sculptures: no longer limited by sculpting ability.
11. Trippy, psychedelic juggling balls. (Glow-in-the-dark printing materials are already available!)
12. Paper clips shaped like Cthulhic tentacles.
13. One word: cosplay. (Or is that two words?)
14. Custom PC cases sweet enough to put Alienware out of business.
15. N-sided dice for your D&D sessions.
16. Bookends! A dragon’s-head bookend for the fantasy shelf, a sandworm bookend to complement your sci fi collection, a bust of Ada Lovelace for your programming section. For those of us who still have non-digital books. 🙂
17. Wedding centerpieces that look like Ambassador Kosh. Because why would you not do this.

So tell me – what would you make with a 3D printer?

Image source: Erik Jacobs, New York Times. Image found here.

The photo above is a real place. Someone really lives in that house on the rock. You can see it on Google Maps, just off the coast of Rhode Island.

It’s called Clingstone. There’s a full gallery of photos if you want to look inside.

I don’t know about you, but for me, Clingstone – the house, the island, the photo, the very idea of it – is captivating.

I’ve written before about my fascination with remote places, but this is a little different. After all, Clingstone isn’t really remote; it sits just a few hundred feet offshore, surrounded by other islands and the city of Newport.

But it’s a place you could go to be alone, and some days, that sounds pretty good.

I was reading somewhere about the difference between introverts and extroverts. For extroverts, being around people is a way to recharge. They draw energy from social interaction. For introverts, it’s the opposite. Interaction costs energy.

If someone invites me to a get-together after work, I hesitate. It’s not that I don’t like people. It’s just that spending time with them is…expensive, even when it’s “free.”

Part of the reason Betsy and I are so happy together, is that spending time with each other is very inexpensive, in terms of energy. We’ve often remarked that when we’re together, we both feel like we’re alone. Not that we don’t talk, or enjoy each other’s company – quite the opposite. But rather, as introverts, the work it takes to be with each other is near zero.

I’m more introverted than she is. I could be alone, totally alone, for a week or so before I’d start to get lonely. For her, I think it’s more like a couple days. But I know people who’d be perfectly happy with months of solitude, and I know people who wouldn’t make it an hour.

What kind of person are you? How long would you want to be alone someplace like Clingstone?

This is my 500th post. I hit the two-year mark on March 30.

Hard to believe it’s already been a year since the first anniversary – and how quickly things change. In my very first post, I declared I would blog exclusively about writing, but it wasn’t long before I opened it up to any topic under the moon. Since then, I’ve switched gears from writing to AI, which has worked out pretty well.

I haven’t stopped writing, of course. The Forty-Minute Stories have continued, ranging from the serious to the absurd to the pretentiously literary. I’ve even thrown out some poetry. You’ve endured these trials bravely, Hypothetical Reader, as is your wont.

I’ve tried your patience further with a slew of philosophical excursions. I abandoned Zen enlightenment and meditated on Van Gogh. I asked whether Star Wars is sexist. I explored miswanting and fired a shot at Pascal’s Wager. I looked for the foundations of ethics and the roots of logic.

In between these musings, I dabbled in many arenas. I took up calligraphy, tried my hand at post-election analysis, extracted hydrogen from water and set it on fire, showed off my animation (ahem) skills, and attempted Celtic knots. And I made some arts, including a steampunk Triforce, a Halloween spider, and a pumpkin of terror.

When I wasn’t busy practicing these dubious skills, I pretty much just rambled on about every topic imaginable. I explained that Armageddon is a place. I listed every book I’d read in the past year. I explored the taxonomy of clouds. I showed how to make secret files on your computer, and I gave you a glimpse of the war on Christmas Island. And I did, um, this.

If you like photos, we’ve got those too. I went to Scotland, and also to Ireland. I dressed up as Two-Face for Halloween. To say nothing of other horrors.

I did two themed week collaborations with my friend Ben Trube. First there was Fractal Week (with lots of groovy maths), and then we did AI week (chock full of robotic goodness).

On the personal side, I’ve made strides toward conquering my needle phobia.

And somewhere in all of that, I managed to get Freshly Pressed. You can read my advice on blogging, for what it’s worth.

Now, it seems – as only a writer can – I’m in danger of rambling about rambling. So I’ll cut it short and say the really important thing:

Thank you.

Thank you for reading, thank you for being interested. Thank you for caring. Thank you for coming along on this journey to Somewhere.

In celebration of this milestone, I therefore declare this post an official de-lurking post! If you’ve never commented before, leave a comment now! If you’re not sure what to put in your comment, just write “Sasquatch.” I won’t judge you, Hypothetical Reader. People in glass blogs shouldn’t cast stones, or something like that.

Non-lurkers are also welcome to comment, of course.

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations – and you may as well stick around a while longer. We’re not done yet!

If you have a WordPress.com blog, your followers are spammers. Not all of them, certainly. But probably some of them, perhaps even most of them.

I’ve been suspicious for a while. I saw my follower count shoot up recently, but I had no idea why. I wasn’t getting more hits. I hadn’t been featured on any big websites. There was no reason for it I could think of. But I never really looked into it.

Yesterday, I looked into it.

WordPress claims I have 259 followers. Let’s see who they are.

For starters, there’s “biggerandwaybetter,” whose icon is a well-endowed woman in a bikini. She runs the entrepreneurial blog “magnettomoney.” Then we have “lennalorette,” a women’s fashion business that’s apparently also very interested in AI and philosophy. Another of my loyal readers is an Indonesian tour company who seemingly got very inspired on April 12, as that’s the date of every single one of their posts.

Yeah.

I don’t have the time or inclination to sort through the whole list, separating the legit readers (you guys!) from the junk, especially when I get new “followers” daily. And even if I did make the effort, there’s nothing I could do about it. You can’t make someone unfollow you, or put them in a separate category, or really do anything at all.

So far, WordPress hardly even acknowledges there’s a problem. I still get a breathlessly excited “Congratulations” e-mail on each new chunk of spam, along with the helpful suggestion that I “might want to go see what they’re up to! Perhaps you will like their blog as much as they liked yours!”

And really, is there a problem? It’s a fair question. After all, who really cares? If spammers want to follow your blog, why worry about it? Just ignore them, right?

Well, yes and no. Yes, as problems go, it’s pretty minor. But it does prove that the follower system is broken. I can no longer browse my readers’ websites in any meaningful way. And the total number of followers, which used to be meaningful, no longer is.

Anyone else had this problem? What do you do about it?