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"Don't ... move."
You may well wonder what happened to the man. Eaten? Trapped underneath a Ford Explorer? Cowering inside a bathroom stall? Torn to shreds inside a remote power facility?
E) None of the above
October has been a busy month. Truth be told, blogging has taken up shop in the back of my head, waiting, biding its time.
Luckily, the ideas, the thoughts, the wondering and observing have not ceased. I have no reason to think they ever will, but that is likely just wishful thinking.
Both "Dinosaur Eats Man" and "Our Feature Presentation." It's November come around the corner, and you know what they say, "Revenge is a dish best served cold."
Brew some coffee.
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To offer some consolation for coming here only to find a shallow explanation and nothing to grab hold to, here's a glimpse at what I've been up to.
That's right, you guessed it. It's the top-down pin planner view of a Cyclone II series Altera field-programmable gate array! I used it to successfully implement a four-bit addition and subtraction unit that I designed using both VHDL and schematic capture in Quartus II. Fun stuff, I tell you.
Fun stuff.
Ahoy-hoy?
Welcome to http://dinosaureatsman.blogspot.com. That's hyper-text transfer protocol, a couple of notifiers and delimiters, a header, a domain, and a classification. All brought to you by the cooperative efforts of several different magics. DNS, HTML, yadda yadda yadda. I know what you're thinking. "Is this going to be a bunch of our endeared author flaunting some empty knowledge of a bunch of acronyms that are totally unimportant?"
Oh ye, of little faith. Forgive my indulgence; the comma was included for dramatic effect.
What I speak of is what makes the world go round. What makes your Dow Jones Industrial Average do that thing it does. What keeps you seated in front of an array of a vast array of pixels for a big chunk of your day. What puts Paolo Conte's "Come di" out at a more than moderate decibel level for your pure enjoyment. What lets me see what's going on, at any given time at 024 HWY 69 & MIMOSA, at 008 15th and McFarland, at 030 McF & Rice Mine, and at 004 LWS & University across my Tuscaloosa Metropolitan Area.
I speak of what has so commandingly placed humanity on the precipice of its greatest leaps and bounds forward. I read an article saying that human evolution is leveling off thanks to the growing homogeneousity of dispersed population. That and agriculture. Me and my Dell Latitude D830 beg to differ. I believe our fingers will grow stronger, perhaps even more adept at doing all those... "fingery" things than they are now. I believe our minds, given enough time, will adopt a more structured interpretation of natural and cognitive phenomena thanks to the digital world we have imposed upon our senses. (Read: don't mistake what I mean by digital - it's high or it's low, on or off, 1 or 0, +5V or 0V, Vcc or ground.) I believe, mayhap even most likely-ily, that our eyes will take leaps and bounds to keep up with smaller things. Faster things. Far less discreet things.
But I am no geneticist. No human developmental anthropologist. Not even an engineer... not yet.
We live in an age where more world than is reachable by sea is reachable by strokes on a keyboard. Where the face of a child who might never have known the rest of the world, or vice-versa, is captured in a resolution more refined than many of us can see in the first place and entrusted forever to the annals of the internet.
Mind you - let me borrow that spring board, Mr. Louganis - I don't think the internet has limits anymore. You know in "Terminator 3" (I'm going to assume everyone watched the sub-par threequel just like I did) when they figure out that the whole ploy was to get them to survive Judgment Day inside the mountain, and Connor makes the comment about how Skynet was not some machine they could deactivate, but that it was software, existing all throughout the world. That's the internet. But surely it has ventured past classification. It is nowhere (read: now here.) In your pockets, in the memes in your head, in your cell phone conversations, in your car's technical read-outs, in your shoes! It is our world. And what a world we have crafted for ourselves.
We live in an age of limitless potential... think about that for a while.
I do not frown on any aspect of the information age. It is our beast, should we not take it by the horns? Turn it where we would have it go? Should we not utilize being able to quickly and effectively communicate at all times? Bounce ideas around, question concepts, resolve conflicts in the most open forum possible?
I think so.
We live in an age of limitless potential. I said that a moment ago, now let's come back to it. You would assume I infer that the internet, that the machines of our information age have granted us this condition. I beg to differ. We have always lived in an age of limitless potential - this I call the age of man. Simply enough, we've just got one of them fancy new-fangled playgrounds to romp around on, instead of one of those step-by-step jungle gyms littered with pebbles from back in my day. I tell you, back in my day...
Dear Blog,
I'm sorry for "neglecting" you for a while, even though I know you don't see it that way. You know what your purpose is, and you are patient with me, and I appreciate that to no end. You don't mind the time I've been spending with http://ourfeaturepresentation.blogpsot.com - you understand its place and yours. I entrust to you, "Dinosaur Eats Man," the most essential and unique bits of who I just might be. There is no other place for them.
Thank you for being the window between wherever it is inside me these thoughts are born and the rest of the world... that is, the portion that gets on the internet thereof.
You're going to help people, because you're good enough, you're smart enough, and doggone it, people like you!
Your author,
Joseph
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Dear Reader,
Thank you for taking the time to filter through my inwardly directed musings to find your place here. Sunday, September 28, 2008 reads my computer calendar. 12:57 PM to the minute. Personally, it is hard to believe that October is so nearly here. Midterm grades, project presentations, 5+ and 0 Alabama football games, a Halloween carnival, and more? Did I leave out the bears? Oh my.
My days are full of Boolean algebra and essential prime implicants. Of cheddar and potato chowder and Caesar salads. Of capacitance and resistivity. Neuer Wein und Zwiebelkuchen and adjective endings. Tests for linear independence and Gauss-Jordan elimination. Boardroom meetings and Second Life. What about my first life? Is that what all these things make up, really? Or do they just fill the gaps between every bit of my real life? I don't see how. I don't imagine there are gaps.
I imagine this is who I am on any given day... I am perfectly fine with that. I have my friends, my love, my thoughts, my imaginings, and my video games even, but I'm a student, growing, trying to get somewhere, and I am perfectly fine with reaffirming that fact every day. I am lucky, because nowadays, nowadours, nowadweeks, I seem to find myself perfectly fine with a lot of things.
And that's fine by me.
Apparently, I ought to co-op with a company in my probable career field sometime in my undergraduate course. Who knew? I don't think it makes much sense to stress too much about it now, not this semester. For one, I am in no position to worry about anything but grades. It makes more sense to think of co-oping right before a summer, but... do they have interview day in the spring? I don't believe so. I'm sorry to ask you so many rhetorical questions, reader. I will surely find all the answers soon enough.
More than apparently, there is next to nothing stopping me from studying abroad sometime in my undergraduate course. I'll admit, being this... well, lucky? Privileged? It nearly makes it feel like a responsibility. And what a lovely prospect... a semester or a summer in Germany. It is really hard to imagine, but I imagine when the time comes, I will be but a few well-placed steps from making it happen. What a world, and what a world could I come to know.
I hope you enjoyed this "update" on your reluctantly nimble author on hand. You can feel certain that I enjoyed it. It feels good.
Don't be a stranger. And don't miss "Our Feature Presentation." I would call it a lot more modular than "Dinosaur Eats Man," albeit perhaps less... in-depth? But no...oh heck, go read for yourself.
Cheers,
Joseph
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Dear Life,
Keep up with the unpredictability. I am enjoying it. Keep putting that soreness into my legs and arms the day after I visit the rec. center. It reminds me that you are there. Keep up with the unpredictability... but don't change the color of plain white light bulbs: that soft, orange glow. I need that. Keep up with the unpredictability, but don't change the way I puzzle myself every time I see myself in the mirror.
Be careful,
Joseph
