The kitties are doing really well, and have been enjoying their Christmas presents. They have played with the spinning toy the Lee’s got them, Lana has actually been sitting in the crate that Steph got, and Archer has been enjoying the new fleece sheets that Steph bought. He looks like Jabba kitty in the picture below.
We played a good game of Mage Knight with myself being the generalist, Adam was the unit guy, Tina was the blood lady, and Nick was the movement person. We did a co-op scenario where there was a large army going to a city and we had to get there first. I was able to pick up a lot of great combo spells and artifacts along the way that let me do blanket damage to tons of enemies, so when it got time to fight the final boss I took most of the smaller minions. In the city assault I was barely able to hold off the one guy I was up against, but he was a very powerful guy. I enjoyed the afternoon/evening, especially since we ended up winning, but it was a challenge.
Steph and I joined a large group at the Symphony and Dance Libre show, Including Adam, Amit, Leyan, Andrew, and Debby. It was a pretty decent show, but I was feeling restless that evening for some reason. We had a decent dinner beforehand at Three in San Mateo, that had great service and great sauces. The appetizers were the best part of the meal by far, with the flaming cheese being both entertaining and delicious. I thought the sauces were fantastic but the bases were a little lacking. The steak didn’t have much of a flavor besides balsamic sauce, and the bread wasn’t terribly good, but for the cheese on it. I still had a great time there, especially with Steph.
This was a great time in the city with Nick and Sarah. Steph and I took the train and rode our bikes to the Caltrain and took that to the City. We rode our bikes along the bay, and to the pier. There was a farmer’s market around the pier and we got some food there before continuing on to the exploratorium. We got inside and Nick and I almost immediately got distracted by one of the exhibits, it was a horizontal spinning plate that you could put small plastic wheels onto. The wheels would roll along the plate and if you got it right would stay on and make interesting patterns. We stayed there longer than the girls would have liked. We then went to see many other interesting exhibits, including some geysers that were constructed to go off at 20-30 minutes depending on height, there was a room that had photo-reactive walls, there was an infrared camera to see how hot things were. It was a great time, and I’d be up for going again.
After that we went to Nick’s place and washed our hands a half dozen times because of all the exhibits that everyone had been touching. Then we went to the Ethiopian place near where he lives. The food there was amazing, and the bread they had was better than any other’s we’d had before, because it was made with the Ethiopian starch instead of wheat. It was a great time.
I was hosting last night for games, still at Beachhead, and it ended up being the latest games night in a very long time. It started out with Iliya stopping by and hanging out for a bit. He brought beer and chatted about immigration stories. Once 8:30 rolled around Chris showed up and Jeff and I joined him in a game of Blood Bowl. It was a hilarious game, and I got out to a quick start. I wasn’t in as many of the matches so I ended up winning most of the ones I was in. The final round they caught up some, but it wasn’t quite enough.
After we wrapped that up we played Dungeon Quest (aka Fall in a Pit and Die). The game is very unforgiving, there isn’t much choice involved, and you can die immediately and unexpectedly. The game revolves around luck mitigation, which is achieved primarily by drawing for a large number of decks depending on what you are trying to do. We ended up playing three rounds of this with Adam joining for the second two rounds. We had a great time, with everyone dying the first and second games, with myself making it out with a good deal of treasure on the third game. Adam also made it out on the third game, but he left with a small amount of treasure. I got insanely lucky on many draws on that third game, with doors opening for me, rooms being empty, and the dragon not waking up. I even had some time to spare, and a potion to get more when I exited. Jeff got caught by the dragon, and Chris died in a trap on that last go around.
Steph and I went to dinner with her parents at a nice restaurant in San Carlos. They got a decent groupon for dinner, and I assumed it was at a decent but not fancy place. The place was actually rather fancy, and Steph just happened to wear a decent looking sweater, but I was looking somewhat ill suited for the place in a t-shirt. Steph and I both got gnocchi and it was delicious.
Kevin, Andrew, Adam, and I did a draft of Conspiracy, which went really well for me. I was able to get a few hidden heavy hitters, and that made it possible for me to hide my strength, and then get a killer blow. I had a 19/19 that I could make unblockable. The second game didn’t go as well for me since Kevin was wise to my machinations and decided to take me out early. He got me pretty weak, but then I got the same beast in at an even higher power, and crushed him in one swoop. I was taken out quickly after that, so no luck on winning the second game. Kevin had to go shortly after that, and we were able to get a decent three way matchup with M15. It was either a rock paper scissors or Andrew won it all. I don’t quite recall. I really enjoyed the deck I built up that game, but it didn’t ever hit really well. I was always in a moderately good but not great draw position.
Jeff and I played a game of Blood Bowl, and I lost spectacularly. I was the dark elves, and wasn’t able to get enough tackles or get the ball.
We then played a game of Shadows with Chris, Adam, Tina, Steph, Jeff, and Toluh. We got off to a rough start with me losing the battle for Lancelot’s Armor by a tiny amount and one turn. The rest of the game went really well, and Tina was obviously the traitor when she built her health up a lot. We were able to get Excalibur and the Grail to win the game.
It has been almost two years since I’ve started blogging, and a lot has changed in my life over that time. I am at a point now where I need to start thinking of what is next for me, and also what is next in general. I want to position myself in the industries where there will be growth and a long, interesting future for me to work towards.
I’ll start with my views of what’s next in general, and that is sensing and automation. We are just now touching the surface of sensing and automation with wearables, the start of self driving cars, smart homes, and other smart devices. The sensing will necessarily come first, and is coming along strong right now. These devices once deployed will generate lots of data, that will need people to analyze at first. Sensing devices will continue to be deployed until people with the expertise to analyze them will no longer be able to, and then it will be automated more and more. The amount of sensors that will be deployed will increase, making the number of active sensors increase even faster. I expect there will be more and more we have sensed, like where we are in the house, and what we are doing. The automation will try to determine what we will want to do next.
To be specific about this sensing, I expect traffic and driving to be one of the major overhauls. I think there will be a large set of cameras and lidar like devices all over the place in cities in the upcoming years. These devices will replace many of the current systems like the inductive sensing for currently automated traffic lights, toll booth operators, weigh stations, law enforcement, and street taxes. There will also be a lot of additional systems that don’t replace anything old, but just add to the experience of driving in either a safety, convenience, or advertising manor. These new sensors could monitor pollution, criminal activity, natural unsafe activity (limb falls), pot holes, flooded underpasses, and much more.
All the sensing will be leading to more and more automation. This will be clearly the self driving cars, including things like self driving semi trucks, self driving taxis, and self driving houses (think mini house on wheels that shows up at wherever you want). The driving automation is just the tip of the iceberg, since it is only one portion of our life. The other automation will come in food (mediocre at first, but will get better), cleaning (super smart roomba for everything), fabrication (3D printing on demand, of items that a computer predicts you’ll want). That last one is a bit far fetched, but I think it will be there, just will most likely take another 20 to 30 years.
There will also be internal sensing, to monitor things like blood pressure, blood sugar, lipids, heart rate, etc. That information will be analyzed by your device and suggestions will be made to keep you healthy. There could even be sensors over each segment of the body so that the device knows your precise movements at all times. This isn’t even getting into the realm of augmentation for human bodies, just the monitoring of them.
The next level of life past sensing and automation is augmentation. This will probably start very slowly, and most likely in the third world. The regulations that will be around this at first will be very strict in most countries, so getting eyes that can see in infrared won’t be readily doable in a first world nation. The start of this is coming with prosthetics for people that have indirect brain interfaces. These interfaces are reading the brain patterns from outside the skull right now, but eventually they will be implanted directly inside. The brain has 5 main i/o points (ears, eyes, spine) and each of these could be turned into a bio-digital port with the right technology. This would in theory allow for the recording of experiences and playback given an extensive calibration, and possibly allow it to be transferred across people.
The last big trend that I see happening in the future is the advent of self replicating robots. The possibilities for this are pretty self evident, but some of the repercussions aren’t. Once there are a plethora of robots that can do everything we need them to, there is nothing for us to do anymore. The regular people who don’t own corporations that handle automation, sensing, neural interfaces, or self replicating robots will have no jobs. This won’t be them not being able or willing to work, it will be that everything can be done cheaper, faster, and better than them by a robot that was produced without any human effort being expended. This will lead to the requirement of a new form of economics and a new form of social order. The one thing that people might be able to do is sell their brain capacity or body at a point where all these technologies have peaked. If a 20 something needs money and is willing to be a brain in a jar for it, then they can just have their brain taken out and hooked up with i/o ports to the net, then their body can be controlled by whoever bought it, much like the movie “Gamer” but without the original brain being in the body still. This future is disturbing but something that will most likely come about if all the technology previously mentioned is invented. I can see several other less likely paths, but they are mostly doomsday scenarios, like the terminator movies.
My part in the future will most likely be around data analysis of these sensing technologies if I choose to take part in any of these complicated systems. Given the chance I’d love to be a part of the sensing and automation. I’d also love to be a part of the neural interfaces, or the tech, like oculus, that will be the precursors of them, but I’m not really heading much in that direction right now. I could slowly work my way there, and I think it will be worth it, but not as a company owner that doesn’t know much in the space.
It's an Exciting World 