Category Archives: Psychic Says

Oracular visions of impending occurances. Or projects, plans, and upcoming events.

Space Miners Ltd

Ok, get your spacesuite out of the closet again; it’s time to get rich.

Get in on the asteroid goldrush before anyone else!

Asterank

This site provides estimates for the potential values and profits for a number of near-Earth objects suitable for mining.  Get there before the competition!  Make trillions!  Yes, T trillions.  You can send my commission via PayPal.

JamesIsIn

A Smarter Thermostat

I recently bought the very popular smart thermostat and was filled with high hopes for how this might change my life.  I would buy this thermostat (or some rough equivalent) for another house if that comes up as an option in the future.  That being said, it’s not that smart.  I’d like to sketch out what I think a genuinely smart thermostat ought to have available to it.

  • Scheduling:
    • Work hours and days
    • Sleep times each day
    • Minimum temperature during sleep
    • Minimum temperature during work
    • Minimum temperature while home
  • Bigger Data:
    • Humidity indoors (sensor)
    • Humidity outdoors (sensor)
    • Temperature outdoors (sensor)
    • Local forecast (don’t heat two degrees if the house will warm by twenty in half an hour when the sun hits it)
  • Zone Data:
    • Add sensors (remote probes) to zones without thermostats for extra data
    • Data zones must be meaningful in a zone map
    • Data should be gathered both in and out of doors
    • Use air circulation to normalize temperatures (to augment heating and cooling)
    • Energy efficiency determiners (seeking ways to balance circulations, zones, heating and cooling, solar thermal influence, and the heating and cooling bills

Using a larger data set and these additional data sources should give something genuinely capable of improving the on-off nature of a classical thermostat.

It’s also important to note that there are human matters to consider when setting the current temperature for comfort.  Our comfort is not driven by a particular temperature numeral!  There is a lot more to consider (even more than temperature + humidity).  The access to sunlight, last workout, food eaten, time since eating, vacuuming (always makes me sweat).  A lot.

We need a smarter thermostat.

Yes, these slightly-less-dumb thermostats are good enough for the moment; but they are quite disappointing when you consider what could be done.

JamesIsIn

Ce n’est pas ma faute

I am not a magical mind.  I am not a unique and beautiful snowflake.  I’m just another drone.  And I had the same drone thought that all you other drones had.  “You named your new gizmo after a feminine hygiene product?”

I remember running through a list of possible iObject names while I was thinking about the upcoming announcement from Apple.  I must admit that iPad never crossed my mind.  We have to at least credit them for being original in this sense.

Regardless, this is the iDevice naming scheme jumping the shark.  They cannot continue with this naming scheme after this clear if bazaar foible.  Any new product following that naming scheme will be subject to “oh, it’s from those iPad people”.  Impressive.

I can’t even be bothered to post a link to a clever response.  There are just too many excellent responses.

Hang tough, you crazy caterpillars.

Time Wastes Us

Erasing Gives Assurances

Ok, so I had this little idea.  Then I did a search and discovered that I am not alone.  But I’m going to post it anyway because mine is in fact just a little different.

Attention appliance manufacturers, please build your machines covered in an enamel that is dry-erase compatible.  That is to say, make all appliances white boards.

Clearly the big winner in this will be the refrigerator.  Folks can leave notes for family members and roommates using erasable pens on its vast white surfaces.

My fridge downstairs has an enamel which is textured.  I think it’s supposed to be an emulated leather texture.  Not sure why.  Anyway, it could certainly be smooth.  No reason for it not to be (faux-leather? c’mon).

My washing machine, my clothes dryer, and my dishwasher are all smooth surfaces.  I have not yet tested them for dry-erase compatibility.  But I will.  Inconspicuously, of course.

Always seeking ways to improve our lot here on spaceship Earth.

Happy hunting.

An Historic Event

Well, I have been saying this for a long time now and I may as well put it in print (mostly so that my friends will have something to talk about when making fun of my predictions).  I am saying that tonight we are going to see a remarkable landslide victory for Barack Obama.  I’m thinking of something unprecidented, a record breaker.  Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing remains to be seen, but that is my prediction.

This will come as a surprise to anyone who has heard me talk about politics in the past.  I was quite certain that the Republicans would be the first to get a minority/woman into the white house.  I reasoned that the Democrats showed a history of choosing a candidate who had some particular minority status over another candidate who was the best candidate.  In other words the Democrats had in the past selected a minority or female candidate precisely because they were a minority or a woman.  It seemed to me that the Republicans would make that choice on more conservative grounds, namely that the best candidate they had to offer happened to be a minority or a woman.

History has proved this prediction of mine so incredibly wrong! The Democrats have put forward the best candidate they have run in the primaries since Brown.  And he happens to have some minority status.  So be it.  Great. Then the Republicans selected a VP running-mate for McCain purely on the basis that she was a she.  Holy Carp!  How do these things happen?  Where was the wisdom?

That’s dumber’an W.

So there you have my two scents worth.

Get thee to the poles, Ophelia.

Transportation: The Final Solution

People often ask me “Jimbo, how can we possibly solve the transportation problem in the midsts of the great energy crisis we are facing?”.  I am asked this question due to the first of two ubiquitous misconceptions which exist about me, namely that somehow I am the secret ruler of all things human. The other misconception, that I am psychic, I have no intention of dispelling. In stark contrast I intend to exploit this to my greatest advantage whenever and wherever possible. I know what you’re thinking.

Though I do work my best toward expelling this myth of supreme leadership by demonstrating my impotence and even incompetence in matters involving humanity and society, I have actually through a careful system of reflection come to the ultimate solution to the transportation problem.

My solution will provide employment for a class of citizen as yet underutilized in our modern society:  the He-Man.

Muscles: I have no words.
Muscles: I have no words.

Bulked up beyond recognition by chemical means, too animated for the serene life of large equipment operation, floating on the winds of chance like gargantuan gypsies, each muscle group a topographical metaphor for life in a cage and the yearning for freedom—these competitors in strongest man competitions, these members of wrestling federations, will become the socially elevated denizens of the new tomorrow. They are to be a vital element within the system and they will be revered for the role they shall play in delivering humanity from our crisis.

The nib of the crisis is that we are relying upon fuels to move humans from one location to another.  In former eras we used human or animal power to move our phat butts about.  This change was all well and good so long as these fuels were abundant and cheap.  Pump them out of the ground and drive away.  The earth made them and so the labor cost was surprisingly low.

Now we are running out of these cheap fuels.  Not even fourth world children will work that cheap.  Transportation is in jeopardy.  We cannot let it sink alongside electric lighting and the Internet.  Something must be done and I have the solution.

First we build a number of stations which will be manned and operated by the he-men mentioned above.  Next individual transportation equipment will be reduced from SUV’s and sports sedans to two essential and personal garments.

In total there are three pieces of technology, each of which has seen practical use as of this writing.

At each station there will be found catapults and trebuchet.  The he-men will be on hand to wind the levers in preparation for lift-off.  Each passenger will have a special parachute and a secret squirrel flying suit.

A passenger gets comfortable in the prepared lever and is launched into flight in the direction of the next station (in the case of a long range trip) or in the direction of their destination (in the case of a local trip).

For those inclined to think the trebuchet is passe, here is proof-positive that they are being used by innovators on this continent.

The flying suits are used to extend natural flying time associated with spring loaded technologies, while the parachutes will be used to guide the traveler into the landing arena.

In the end parachutes may be superfluous for many passengers and destinations:

For those travelers using chutes, chutes may be exchanged at stations for a fee to avoid delays in re-packing chutes.  For those travelers preferring to re-pack their own parachutes, a re-packing area will be provided near the snack areas.

Travelers traveling with children or pets are encouraged to arrive early to accommodate the additional procedures necessary in this new modern age.

Terrorists are encouraged to set their explosives to detonate near the top of the initial parabolic curve so as to maximize the entertainment value for any citizens in the vicinity.

Cross-oceanic voyages will be possible by using the soon-to-be defunct oil drilling platforms as stations across the Atlantic, the Pacific, and other larger bodies of water.

As you can see, this system contains all the elements necessary to ensure its success and widespread acceptance.

Obligatory Open Challenge:

There are a lot of crazy people in this world.  Seems like I already know most of them.  Now I’m calling out to the ones I don’t know.  Let’s set this up.  Let’s build a catapult or a trebuchet and launch one of you madder-than-a-hatter extreme sports junkies into the clear blue.  Fame, fortune, your name in tights.

We can’t likely win the world record for longest human powered flight, but I think we will be setting a record for something.  The question is: how far can we fling/fly/land a person using this method?

Looking forward to your comments.

Jeb is the perfect candidate to test my system. Crazy or adventurous, he’s got the moxy to get the job done.

Or perhaps Yves Rossy would be a good candidate for testing my system too. Here you will find a good demonstration of his flying techniques.

Nominate your favorite madman.

JamesIsIn

Time: Illusion or Magazine?

Predicting the future is no easy task, but nothing worth doing ever is.  Right?  Right?

Kurt Gödel tells us, proves rather convincingly in fact, that time itself is a farce.  Consider for a moment that old physics relic: The Ether.  Nice theoretical tool but look where it went.  Eventually there was nothing to support it.  It could not be detected.  It could not be measured.  It really didn’t seem to have any causal or substantial reality.  It became, as my old philosophy professor was so fond of saying, a dangler.  The Ether was just hanging off the edge with no real purpose.  So it got trimmed.  Kurt Gödel has slipped time into that sort of dangler status.

He called into question the notions we all have concerning the flow of time.  How does this perceptive, intuitive experience relate to the actual physical world around us?

Can we really flip through time (through very fast space travel within particularly curved-space universes) as we might flip through the glossy pages of a magazine (presumably made of Teflon so as not to burst into flame)?

Very difficult questions.

However, we are here more interested in predictions about the future.  I know that we have all had ideas about what the shape of the future could be like.  Is it going to be shaped like that poor snake who just ate an elephant?

I predict—and I feel very confident that this will come to pass—the Psychic Says category will one day overflow with the hopes and dreams of our crack team of psychics.  These things just happen.

JamesIsIn