Had lunch with my old friend Peter today. He was recently-ish made a fellow at his company (Synopsys). Today he was reflecting on the Edison quote perspiration success being 10 % inspiration and 90% perspiration.. It got me thinking.. I get the part about the need to work hard to make an idea successful.. Ideas are cheap.. Ifrequently come across situations at work where someone thinks once pery have the idea.. the thk is done.. ideas are cheap.. but is it really 10%/90%/.. maybe is 40%inspiration and 60% worldperiation.. or maybe even 50%/50% .. it doesn’t make for such a pithy quote.. i know….

I’ve been pondering this for the last couple of days because i’m trying to dialing in how much brainstorming, vs how much ‘work’ (building, coding, complaining about coding, re-codeing, rebuilding etc) .. I thiways tend to err on the side of too much of the former.. and not enough on the latter.. on the other had.. life gets alsossivly less fun the less of the former I do..

hmmmm  .. gotta brainstorm on that for a bit 🙂

nite all, nite sam

-me

Just sat down to blog.. and the wireless wasn’t working.. of course not.. Mercury is in retrograde.. whatever that means.. Actually , those astrologically or astronomical aware readers will know that we are just leaving the periond in which mercury’s and earth’s orbits do this little do-see-doh.. and mercury appears to stall and then travel backwards across the ecliptic..   The key word is ‘appears’.. nothing crazy is happening in space.. it’s just from our vantage point things look kind of wacky.. it’s like car wheels appearing to go backwards when you look at them through a fence..    That sounds pretty cool.. no ?

the trouble is, the period of retrograde has a terrible reputation for things not working.. Communications, computers. machines, cars, relationships, finance.. everything..

now.. I’m a scientist.. and there’s no way in the world that an optical illusion around the position of a small sun blasted rock several light minutes away could have anything to do with how my electronics are function here on earth… but.. Evidence over the past few days is trying to get me to believe otherwise..

In the past two weeks i’ve had problems with our house wireless, our  printer, dines  iPhone , my new iPhone, several USB cables, the down stairs wifi dongle, a tesla coil, a theremin.. the Amazon echo, my weather station, my smart things setup, several tile tags…

maybe mercury in retrograde is just bad for IoT ?

Anyway.. i note on the calendar that we are just leaving retrograde.. I give all my electronics permission to start working together again..

can’t we all just get along ?

nite all, nite sam

-me

This morning I heard from my friend Rafe that Prof. Marvin Minsky had died. Minsky who founded the AI lab at MIT  was considered by most  to be the father of Artificial Intelligence . He was also the father of our good friend Henry who lived in our dorm .   The Minsky’s lived in Brookline in a great old house that was just packed with cool stuff and cool people. I didn’t know Henry’s parents all that well, but when we saw them they were always really warm and welcoming. I remember one time sitting in a full size swing in their dining room ,looking at a 6 foot long mortar shell and listening to Marvin play the piano.. he could make up things that sounded like Bach fugues.   Last time I saw him was a few years back at a FIRST competition in Boston.. he lent me his fork.. .. He was such a cool guy..

My colleagues and I  are working more and more on AI concepts that Marvin developed. We owe him much…  Thank you Marvin.. !

nite all, nite sam

-me

High point of today was going to see my cousin Dr. Jon Patz speak at UVM  on the Global warming.  It was a great talk.. He didn’t give  one of those doom and gloom global warming talks.. instead he talked about how the health savings of avoiding global warming more than offset the costs of the mitigations required to control it.. It was a compelling argument !

Jon did have some scary charts.. like this best case/worst case on warming.. right now we’re on track for the one on the right !

and a chart showing relative carbon emissions vs mortality rates due to climate related problmes

Jon talked about his times meeting the Dali Lama..

and the carbon impact of diet !

eating bugs is an option !

or maybe worms !

I was so proud to be there .. here we are with Jon and Jean.. right after, we took them to their plane

ok.. 1AM.. and just finishing up work..

time to sleep !!!

-me