Long Distance Over Time

Message fer ya sir!

Communications has come far in a short while. Of course short is sort of hard to define. I keep thinking that I was a school kid not too long ago and here that was around 40 years ago.

In any case, when I was a kid in the 1960's way back in the 20th century people still got telegrams! Albeit we used phones and had long distance calling. We could call across oceans though even a call across a province or state wouldn't have the clarity of a call across the city. We also wouldn't need an operator for a call most places in the city. I think that for a while at least we did need the operator to call long distance. Definitely we were tied to the wall with wires. Some people more than others if they tended to stand and pivot while talking. Cordless phones didn't exist and while there were the very rare "radio telephones" the emphasis was on "radio" and not "telephone".

With the radio telephone ypu called a radio operator and they dialed the phone number and patched you through. You couldn't just talk into the telephone handset because you couldn't talk and listen at the same time - there was a switch to press to talk which turned off the earpiece. It also had limits to its range, though my uncle used it in pretty remote places... Come to think of it, I don't think there's cell phone coverage in those places yet.

Many home phones were actually built into cubbyholes in the wall in the kitchen because there only was one phone in the home and it was owned by "the" phone company. It was illegal to attach non-phone company property to the lines. There were other phones for office desks and affluent people had "princess" phones in their bedrooms. Most all phones had dials rather than pushbuttons. Only ten digits all in a circle.

Getting back to the telegrams - people still used them for a few reasons. I know that families dreaded them because a telegram almost always was bad news. Normally it told you that someone dear to you had died. It was used for important communication over long distances because - I guess - the long distance phone service was unreliable and might be misunderstood. Telex systems were around for business correspondence and there were computers in the truly major companies. They used punched cards, magnetic tapes, magnetic drums, and some even magnetic disks. When I learned programming in the mid 70's we still used punched cards, though terminals were around.

The other thing with long distance calling was that it was expensive. A call from Grandma and Grandpa in Manitoba was an event! We lived in Calgary, Alberta at the time - a distance of around 1000 miles away and few people flew. It almost seems that long distance calls back then were as common as flying is today - not quite but it felt like it.

Today, you can make long distance calls anywhere in Canada and the US for as little as 3 cents a minute or even - if you know how to subscribe - unlimited long distance for between $3 and $17 a month! Then there are the Cell phones which allow people to talk from nearly any halfway civilized place. Of course they are meaning the demise of the pay telephone just as very cheap long distance has meant the demise of the telegram. (Well there are other reasons too.) And then there is communication by computer: you can correspond with email; chat live via instant messenger; talk via messenger or VOIP; or even visit using Video and Audio. Virtual reality is nearly here if it isn't already on a limited level.

I already regularly have video conversations with friends in other hemispheres without any worry about costs. Sometimes we have conferences with more than just two of us.

So, from expensive poor quaity long distance telephone calls from phones hard wired to the wall to video calls without toll charges to other hemispheres... it has been quite a ride.

I joke sometimes with my friends about sneezes heard around the world.

Later!
~Darrell

"Green" House - An Earthy Proposition

An Earthy Proposition

There are many ways to create a smaller footprint on the environment. One way is to use local natural materials. The options in the country and pastoral areas are different from those of urban and suburban centres. The crossover areas between the suburbs and open countryside can be very flexible in just what sort of building you might construct, while in the city there may be problems with the more exotic of environmentally friendly dwellings and commercial buildings.

One such dwelling is a low impact woodland home built by Simon Dale*, family, friends, and passers by in Wales. This home built slightly into a hillside and constructed of stone and mud from the digging required for the structure; spare wood from the surrounding woodland (thinnings); bales of straw in floor, walls, and roof for insulation; a mud and turf roof (with a sheet of plastic); lime plaster; and much else salvaged from rubbish piles around. They use the mass of stone and plaster surrounding the woodburner to absorb heat, retain it and slowly release it and the fridge is cooled by natural cool air coming through the foundation. I could go on, but nearly every feature of the house is equally "green".

The house used little specialized labour to build and materials were very inexpensive - labour being the most expensive part. From the pictures it looks comfortable. You can find out much about this home on their website about "A Low Impact Woodland Home".

I have seen other projects more suited to more conservative tastes using "rammed earth" construction or straw walls. The rammed earth construction takes local soil and mixes it with a very small amount of cement then rams it with packing machines until it is hard as concrete. It is rather beautiful in a rustic fashion. There is one company that is doing this sort of construction and putting Styrofoam (tm) insulation in the centre of the walls. I believe they call it "SIRE" for Styrofoam(tm) Insulated Rammed Earth construction.

The straw walls, from what I understand consist of building walls with bales of straw and placing a mesh of metal on either side and essentially sewing the mesh on either side together by passing an arrow sized "needle" back and forth through the straw with rope sized thread. they then plaster the outside with a few coats of a plaster-cement mix. The walls breath but are very insulative. The SIRE walls also are very insulative.

Buildings are also using heat pumps for heating and air conditioning using the inherant heat of the earth as the energy source for the heat pump's workings and energy sink for cooling rather than the air. Some suburban plans call for grey water treatment at the home through the yard into marshes incorporated into the suburb designs.

Older buildings are being retrofitted with the heat pumps and improved insulation as well as systems to allow for fresh air from outside to be taken in without chilling the building in winter or heating it in summer.

There are so many other things I could mention, but that woodland home, nearly making no visual impact in the woodland is inspirational.

Later

~ Darrell

* I believe the name is Simon Dale, I extrapolated that from his email address, I couldn't find mention in the web site.

Stumble Upon - A Stumbling We Shall Go

A Stumbling We Shall Go

I have mentioned using StumbleUpon a few times in this Blog, so I guess I should write a bit about it. StumbleUpon is a web service that allows you to seek out websites of interest and people who have similar interests in websites to you. It uses a few techniques to learn how to do this.

• First is that they ask you what your interests are. There is a form/table where you can tick off the various subjects on a listing that interest you.
• Second is by surfing through people who have similar interests to you and and on your profile pages adding them as friends - or fans to let them know that you might be interested in the pages that interest them.
• Third is that you can fine-tune your interest listing as you go by adjusting it on your profile pages.
  
• Fourth is that when you go to a web page, you can give it a thumbs-up or thumbs-down as to whether or not that sort of web page interests you. You do that by clicking thumbs-up or thumbs-down on their tool bar.

"Tool Bar" - I guess I haven't mentioned the tool-bar yet. The StumbleUpon tool-bar is fairly integral although you can create a profile/account with StumbleUpon without installing their tool-bar. The tool-bar however does help out though. The StumbleUpon tool-bar is available for Firefox and Internet Explorer and I know that it works as well for Firefox on my MacBook as it does for Firefox on my WinXP PC. With Firefox I have a button on my regular toolbar which allows me to turn my StumbleUpon tool-bar on and off.

The Main things I want to point out are the "Stumble" button and the "I like it" thumbs-up and thumbs-down buttons.

The thumbs-up and thumbs-down I have already mentioned. when you hit a page you indicate whether it interests you or not and StumbleUpon learns more and more what you like. If no StumbleUpon has reviewed the site it will give you the opportunity to review the site yourself. The review will be posted for others to use in evaluating the site or in searches. The review will also be placed in your journal on your profile pages.

The "Stumble" button is one of the neat things - click on it and StumbleUpon will take you to a random site on the world wide web based on your likes-dislikes-interests. The longer you do it and indicate thumbs-up or down, the better attuned to your likes it will become.

It is also possible to stumble specific likes of yours or to stumble topics of any sort. Be aware that there is a list created that others might access. I think you can clear it though, but perhaps on a whim you might want to stumble through "whips and handcuffs" or something like that - you might not want your Grandmother or Boss finding it. I guess we all have to be aware that in life we make foot-prints and leave fingerprints as we travel the world.

You can discover lots more on your own. You can stumble through people on StumbleUpon as well and through people with common interests to find what pages they have reviewed. You can review a page even if someone else has as well, even if it is a negative review. There is also a "send to" button to share pages by; buttons for going directly to certain pages on your profile like your Friends list or Favourites; and other button. The Firefox toolbar is customizable and you can chose what buttons are on the toobar.

So go get StumbleUpon and explore. Find some new pages. It is great when you are bored or to spur creativity.

Later!
~ Darrell

BTW, on StumbleUpon I'm DarrellWade

Where have all the Heroes gone?

HEROES

The thing with Role Playing Games (RPGs) - especially Fantasy Role Playing Games (FRPGs) is that they focus on slaying monsters or monster-like creatures and discovering and capturing treasure both of monetary value or tactical value. It has been very typical of many of the mainstream games I have seen and played over the decades.

I started in the 70's when the hobby was still pretty young - all right, in its infancy - and it started with really one game in particular, a three booklet set of digest sized rule books for FRP (Fantasy Role Playing - if you haven't figured it out.) That was the original set of rules from TSR for the then new Dungeons & Dragons - No Advanced; no first edition; no basic set; no expert set; no second edition; nor D20 - it was the original to which two or three... or four?... more digest sized booklets were added - "Greyhawk", "Blackmore", "Eldritch Wizardry" (I think?), and "Gods, Demigods, and Heroes".

Some include a similar booklet with, I believe plastic coil binding, but the same digest size called "Chain Mail" however in fact it preceded D&D, I believe and D&D was an offshoot of the rules for fantasy combat included in the otherwise medieval miniature lead figure combat rules. (Toy soldiers of the Middle Ages persuasion.)

Anyway it focused on slaying beasts, getting treasure, and gaining experience for what were called "Adventurers". Often the adventurers were just freebooters wandering the land looking for gain. There were exceptions with some people wanting to play out the "Sir Galahads" and "Sir Lancelots" of fantasy, or perhaps the "Gandalfs" or "Frodos" or "Legalas".

Later as gaming grew a bit other companies matured and grew and other genres than the dungeon and armour and magic ones. Some were built around horror, and others around science fiction. Many were rather fond of a couple based on slightly humourous takes like "Bunnies & Burrows" or "Tunnels & Trolls". Later came the totally slapstick "Toon".

If the early days were the Golden age, the Silver age came with slightly more sophistication... but in reality I wasn't intending on doing up a history. My memory is far too poor with names and dates. But what came during the time that I consider the Silver Age was a game called "Champions".

Champions was a game about "Superheros". The game itself was nearly in a format like a comic, though a touch bigger and the cover and pages more robust. It was rustic by todays standards with courier type and black and white inked artwork. I don't believe the columns were even justified. But the rules let you design superheros and if you were creative and were good at working things out, you could create what you wanted in a workable fashion - especially if the person running things had an idea for "the story" and fun.

It was easiest if for your first goes, the GM (Game Master, a take on the traditional DM or Dungeon Master of the old D&D games.) created your hero. He could do it from your desires and perhaps it would only nearly be what you wanted. But it would let you get started.

The really neat thing to me was that you weren't out to gain treasure, you were out their to rescue people and stop crime! You were playing characters who were doing quite positive things. They often had to face moral dilemmas but that was an important part of comic books and indeed real life.

I played and ran games of "Champions" for over 10 years, I think.

Those years, were years that I played Heroes... of course I also was the sort to play Heroes even in D&D games.

Later I played other games with friends and even the different editions of D&D and AD&D (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons).

After Champions and the Superhero games (There were a few others including Marvel and DC comics offerings.) my next favourite RPG was a D20 game based on "Star Wars"! I guess you can guess that I played a Jedi Knight in the game. I just love playing Hero.

BTW D20 is a system that a large number of games are now based on which use a standardized skeleton of rules which have additional rules to allow them to cover a genre or story world... like Star Wars... or Star Gate.

So ramble, ramble, ramble.... what got me thinking... well I used Stumble Upon and found an intersting page which allows you to create comic books style artwork for characters. It is called "heromachine" and looks like it could be on a Marvel Comic site? "http://www.marvelvc.com.br/Hero/" It is fun to play with, and apparently you can print out your hero directly to a printer. I don't have a working one currently but they give an alternate for saving your Hero and that is to do a screen capture and save the capture on your hard drive. I did so for a fw attempts at my first Superhero, "Comet". I have a thumbnail copy of the picture I created right here. It sure would have been fun to have this software and a printer back then when I was running games. Visual aids brought games to life for players. In later games I actually could do some. But at that time in gaming, the photocopier was king. You found images and photo reduced them using a copier until they were the size you wanted.

Anyhow, I preferred to play heroes to adventurers. Other people always thought the bad guys had more fun. I disagree.

~ Later
Darrell

Wordplay

Poking Fun...

In a forum conversation about some of the silliness in asking a person with actual learning disability in spelling aptitude the gnome added:

Yeah and try to look up lieutenant (wow I spelled it right first go! though the spell checker insists that "spelled" is spelt wrong... or more that I should say that it was not spelt right.) That and bureau. I mean with bureau if you get it wrong you might start with beaureau or leiutenant.... and if you start looking in a dictionary there are so very many combinations of vowels... enough to make bowel sounds come forth with the effart.

...not to mention the phonetic of us who woud be seeking an "F".

BTW what is it with purple brains?

They keep referring to them when someone thinks of something brilliant. If someone comes up with something clever that someone else also has out comes the old saw: Grape minds think alike. Whatever that means....

Wonderful Weather Photography

Wonderful Weather Photography

I found a wonderful page with a little slide show of weather shots. "Jim Reed Photography - Severe & Unusual Weather" booThere are over a dozen artful photgraphs by Jim Reed of incredible severe and unsusual weather shots which incorporate in more than a few of them people and other objecgts to give a sense of scale.

It showcases shots from "Storm Chaser, A Phographer's Journey" a book by Jim Reed.

I love the various shots with clouds and the tornado shots are marvelous. He has a number from his work in National Geographic, I think judging by at least one magazine cover of theirs in the slide show.

I recommend a darkened room for looking at the site in... but I am a bit of a lover of watching slides in a darkened room.

Later!
~ Darrell

The Sky's the Limit

Beautiful Dreaming, Sky Up Above,

Starlight and Space Dust Woven To Views That I Love

WIKISKY.ORG WowThis is a find and a half! I love astronomy and gadgets and learning and this combines them all in something I found using StumbleUpon completely by surprise! This is definitely a pleasant surprise. Not too much time to explore the site or the ones linking to it like an equally impressive looking SKY-MAP.ORG - Interactive Sky Map.

When I first layed eyes on it, it displayed a nice shot from - I would guess - somewhere in the middle of The Lace-work Nebula (NGC 6960) in the constelation of Cygnus and the legend was of a listing of "The Attractive Spots of the Universe.

I really must confess that the wallpaper on my MacBook conists of Astronomical shots of nebula and parts of Nebula from Hubble and Spitzer and the like. I am not sure, but there might be some from Chandra too. If you don't know it, these are various high-tech telescopes in orbit which observe the universe in visual, infrared, and ultraviolet... though off hand I couldn't say which telescope was which except that I know Hubble is visible light... Wait a second! this is the 21st Century and like the 20th Century Television Star Ship Enterprise I have at my beck-and-call tons of information using this very beast of mental burden at my fingertips... one sec... Spitzer is an Infra-red observatory. I should have remembered that from the fantastic shots of stellar nursaries... Okay, Chandra is an Xray observatory... I wonder where I got Ultra-violet from?

Hubble does some Ultra-violet... Hmm there is something called FUSE... I am not so familiar with the Ultra-violet observatories... I shall have to remedy that.

Anyway, I hope you can enjoy the two pages I mentioned and the images and information that are on them.

On a spiritual note, I find some of the images from the modern satellites and telescopes very awe inspiring. To me some of the nebula and galaxies are more worthy of the term "art" than many pieces of art that I have loved. To me it is a sign of the Divine... perhaps if only that the Creator created not only the ability to appreciate beauty, but the concept "beauty" as well. I try not to think of how many light years across some of the features are, or that some are created in the deaths of stars and planets, for out of their death also comes new life.

Later!
~ Darrell

Earthday: Thumb Up for Trees

Invite Your Friends to Help - Thumb Up for Trees

I guess it is the day after Earth Day, but it is still Earth Week, I think. Anyway I looked at my "StumbleUpon" tool bar and they have this special deal for Earth Day: Thumb Up for Trees

With every "Thumbs Up" they get, StumbleUpon will plant a tree with help from the National Forest Foundation*. This runs through May 2nd. There are three steps:

1. Register - Register with StumbleUpon and add the tool bar. (If you already have the tool bar you can skip this.)
2. Thumbs-up - "Thumbs-Up" the Thumbs Up for Trees page with the StumbleUpon toolbar
3. Share - Share this page with friends to plant some more. (If you reload the page you can watch the number of trees grow.)

Quoting from the Thumbs Up for Trees page:

Every
day millions of StumbleUpon users discover great web sites and give them a "Thumbs-up". Starting this Earth Day, we want to harness the power of our community and the "Thumbs-up" to plant trees for the National Forest Foundation.

Simply use the StumbleUpon toolbar to thumbs-up this page and, from now through May 2, with every thumbs-up StumbleUpon will plant a tree with help from the National Forest Foundation*. Your thumbs-up means more trees for America's National Forests and more visibility for this cause. Give a "Thumbs-Up for Trees" and spread the word!

* Sponsorship Agreement: During the campaign period StumbleUpon agrees
to donate funds to the National Forest Foundation to plant trees for
each "Thumbs-Up", up to a maximum donation of $25,000. The Campaign is
being conducted by the National Forest Foundation for the following
charitable purpose: to benefit the overall operation of The National
Forest Foundation.

Anyway they have 10.279 Thumbs-Up so far!

Later!

~ Darrell

Surfin' - BibleMap.Org

Flying Over the Bible

Surfing the Web today I came across a site that interested me. I am interested in maps and satellite imagery as well as history and religion.

BibleMap.org (beta) is a page where you can enter a Bible Verse - Book and Chapter - and it will place on a window with a map using Google Maps markers for the locations mentioned in that chapter of the Bible. The markers are linked to the name and specific reference in that chapter as well as other places the place is mentioned.

I looked up a few chapters - there wasn't anything before Genesis 10... funny thing that... Many chapters of course do not have any geographical references while others have a number. Some of the references have a lot of information.

I found the page to be nice and clean with a large space for the Google map window and the interface to be fairly straight forward. They do have a blog, though it is a bit out of date. It took me a few moments to realize that if you navigate away from the window with the search in it to the blog or other windows on the top menu - that you get back by clicking on the main logo or title.

I gave it a thumbs up on "StumbleUpon" though I know it would be more interesting and useful if I had specific chapters I was interested in instead of doing a hit-or-miss stumbling search through the Bible. I recommend it for anyone interested in the Bible and seeing where those Biblical places lie.

http://www.biblemap.org/

Here is what BibleMap.org writes about itself:

BibleMap.org is developed by the duo at He Lives Ministries (HeLives.com). The motivation for developing the site was simple, create a free Bible atlas which harnesses Google maps. We hope this site will be a blessing to you and possibly help make the living book of the Bible more alive in your life. Any questions or comments may be sent to:

contact@biblemap.org

Many people have helped to make this site possible. Thank you David (BibleMapper.com) for so much GPS help. Thank you to the ESV Bible translation (ESV) team for allowing us to use your translation. Thank you Todd (BiblePlaces.com) for your excellent photos. Thank you Donna and Jackie for entering so much useful information. Thank you Joey (joeyandchristy.com) for the logo.

Later!
~ Darrell

Pigeon Soft Cooing Summer Sky

Pigeon Soft Cooing Summer Sky
I see pretty cloud in the sky
They are grey, mauve, cream, and peach.
No not a shimmery sunset in the sky.
It is a clouded afternoon

Not a sunset with bright sky
But subtle with colours of a pigeon
Wind barely stirs broad waves in the sky
Barely a breath on the ground

Pigeon soft cooing summer sky
No rains today though I wonder why
Gentle day with a gentle sky
Not clear, but not storm

Everyone sees a grey summer sky
Worry about the beach or picnic
Gentle calm from this sky
Gentle in the afternoon calm

Calming grey summer sky
Like a blanket far up high
Higher than mountains this sky
Watching us today

DWPenner
© 2007 by Darrell W Penner

Creative Commons License
Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

<><><><><><><><><>

Author's Comments
I wrote this poem looking at a cloud covered sky on a summer's afternoon. I've also placed this on a picture I took of this sky.

Can you be 13 again?

Up To The Pictophone!

Back in 1970 I entered the Calgary Science Fair with a project called "Up to the Pictophone". I wanted to do something to do with electronics and the future. I also wanted to learn more about television and electronics. I am not 100% sure now why I chose the video telephone, but that was my choice.

I never expected to make one, but I researched telephones and how they worked and how televisions worked and had pictures of what they thought the "Pictophone" would look like. All of our phones in the house still had dials and were owned by the telephone company at the time - you weren't even allowed to plug your own equipment into the line. I am mentioning these things just to give an idea of what things were like not so long ago. At that time, we considered long distance calls an expensive extravagance which we only rarely made or received. Very different from today.

I mention this because there are times I realize that I am living in the future I saw when I was 13. It struck me last night as I was sitting in this very same rocking chair with my MacBook on my lap chatting with my friend in the UK. We didn't have our webcams on at the time, but easily could have. But I looked at the screen of my notebook computer and realized that it was doing exactly what that "Pictophone" was supposed to be doing. It also was in a form not too much different in size from that envisioned for the videophone way back in 1970.

Of course, this computer can do much much more than the envisioned Pictophone. This little notebook computer can do much of what the computers of science fiction of the time could do... and it is only the size of a notebook. Mind you I am considering my computer connected to the Internet. Still, the brains are in the box. This computer can understand rudimentary spoken commands as-is. I believe it can understand much more with just a modest bit of added software. It can recite any document it displays at my command. I have had it read to me whole chapters of the novel I am writing - it can really point out weaknesses in the writing style when you hear it read aloud. If I wanted to know about left handed poodle trimmers, I could search for that information.

There are many other ways in which we are living in a Science Fiction style future as seen from 1970. I think it is interesting to try go back and think of what we would think if we could see where we are now with eyes from then. True there are troubles and problems, but there are wonders too.

It can be good to look at things with fresh eyes.

Can you be 13 again?

Darrell Wade Penner / BelGnorman the Gnome

Technorati Tags: future, technology, nostolgia

Down to Earth - Spam Rant

Keep Spam on the Dinner Plate and off the Internet!

What is the difference between Commercials, Billboards, Junk mail, and SPAM?

Well there is a very fundamental difference between SPAM and the others - Commercials, Billboards, and Junk mail - the users of SPAM don't pay for its distribution. With the others, the advertisers pay for the right to advertise:

• If you wish to send flyers and other Junk mail you have to pay the post office.
• If you wish to put up an ad on a Billboard, you have to pay the company that owns the billboard and they in turn pay for the rights to have a billboard there.
• If you want to put an ad on the TV you have to pay the station or network.

With SPAM, all you need is a list of addresses. It is true you can pay for them, but once you have the list, there is virtually no cost. You can also virtually steal a list of addresses or harvest them. The ads you then send out go across the Internet lines which others pay to maintain. Those are paid for by many people in many ways including the money the users pay to their Internet Service Provider.

All that SPAM, even if everyone had near perfect SPAM filters, does take up bandwidth that could be used for productive and entertaining data. There is a lot of storage space on hard drives in this world just holding ads for products that would make my Grandma blush. Now at one time people said you got certain sorts of ads if you went onto "certain" sorts of sites and signed up or created accounts. They also said that you would get onto lists by signing up for some "groups" forums or lists. But much of my SPAM comes to addresses that have never been used other than as contact addresses on my own websites so people had to have simply copied them from the pages.

So that really makes me wonder... of course if I had a young person using my computer I would have to put some sort of filters and restrictions... but what keeps them from getting this offensive SPAM? Even if the SPAM is not "R" rated it might not be age appropriate.

The question of course is how to deal with SPAM. Personally I wish there was some legal recourse. Spam has even gotten to the point where I am feeling that telephone solicitation is in truth another sort of SPAM.

My Space is being Invaded!

• My Physical Space - with intrusions onto my computer and telephone answering service.
• My Chronological Space - with intrusions into my time with phone interruptions and having to set up filters and delete SPAM while making sure important messages do not get discarded or missed.
• My Mental Space - with intrusions into my thought processes including writing time, conversations with loved ones, business correspondence and all sorts of other thought processes.

But I haven't a clue how to stop it other than have someone figure out some sort of financial reigns they could put on the situation, and it has to be something international.

Well at least my Spam Filters work moderately well and I only get a half dozen or so pieces on my primary email. I do tend to use a slightly temporary email address for public stuff and a private one for more important stuff, The temporary one I can theoretically change to another having closed that first one causing spam to bounce.

So that is getting a bit off my chest about SPAM. I do think that being careful about where you list your primary email is in order. Have a secondary address for more public use that you wouldn't feel bad closing for a while to use a different one.

See you later!

Darrell Wade Penner / BelGnorman the Gnome

Technorati Tags: antiSPAM, grumbles

A Flight of Fantasy

A Flight of Fantasy

I was talking with a friend earlier in the day and one thing led to another and they said something like "nobody better bring up 'Area 51' when discussing it with me" - and that got the humorous side of my mind going. I was going to remark something along the lines of "'Area 51' is nothing, you should see 'Area 52'!" The number "52" got me thinking... I pondered a moment - that "52" was special.... and I realized it was how many weeks there were in a year.

I have a mind that when it wanders, it really packs up a backpack and heads for the back country. So I started considering there might be significance in the number beyond the fact that the "area" numbered before it was "50" and the one behind it was "52".

They say that Area 51 is where the US hides fallen UFO's and alien technology in addition to using it to test cutting edge home grown aeronautical technology like the Lockheed Skunk works bred. Keeping that in mind, I considered this: What is at the end of the 51st week of the year?

CHRISTMAS!

So at the area associated with Christmas is where the US is keeping its toys - trying to unwrap the technology within. That is Area 51 - from an odd viewpoint.

From that same odd viewpoint - though I have never heard of it and do not know if it is marked on any chart, what about "Area 52"? If perhaps in "Flight of Fantasy" I conjecture it exists somewhere, consider for a moment: What is at the end of the 52nd week of the year?

NEW YEARS!

This is the marking of the end of the old year and the beginning of a fresh new page. Perhaps Area 52 would be where the US is reverse engineering the alien technology and getting it to work.

Perhaps craft are taken from Area 51 and taken to Area 52 where the secrets in them are not just revealed, that for the most part happens at Area 51, but in Area 52 they are making it work for themselves?

Now I am not talking any chronological calendar here - no countdown to an end of days or when we can expect a mother ship. Just a designation thing. Oh and "Area 01"? Area 01 is where they have actual home grown craft and equipment using alien technology that is working and being used. After all: Week 01 is in the New Year!

Technorati Tags: Area 51, Area 52, UFO, Fantasy, Alien Technology

Starting something new

Stuck My Foot in it This Time

Well, I'm really sticking my foot into it now. I am planning on writing an article of some sort a day in this blog or making some sort of an entry whether it gets published onto the blog or not that day. IE if I don't have access to the web, then I'll upload what I have at the next opportunity - ditto if I don't have computer access.This is mostly to get my creative writing juices going.

Some of the entries may simply feature a poem I have written though I hope I can take a day-to-day observation and make it interesting enough to read. It would be nice if I could get people other than myself reading this though.

So let's see what happens.

Darrell Wade Penner / Belgnorman the Gnome