SILICON SOAPWARE wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway from Bubbles = Tom Digby = bubbles@well.com http://www.well.com/~bubbles/ Issue #200 New Moon of April 3, 2011 Contents copyright 2011 by Thomas G. Digby, with a liberal definition of "fair use". In other words, feel free to quote excerpts elsewhere (with proper attribution), post the entire zine (verbatim, including this notice) on other boards that don't charge specifically for reading the zine, link my Web page, and so on, but if something from here forms a substantial part of something you make money from, it's only fair that I get a cut of the profits. Silicon Soapware is available via email with or without reader feedback. Details of how to sign up are at the end. ********************* Have you hidden your Easter eggs yet? The date of Easter can vary from late March through most of April. In years when Easter is in April it's traditional to hide Easter eggs on the first day of April. So if April first is a work day, you might bring some eggs to hide around the office. Ideally you would have been keeping your eyes open during the previous few weeks, making note of various obscure nooks and crannies that eggs could be hidden in. Then on egg-hiding day you make your rounds, possibly during break when most others are away from their offices, leaving your eggs in the hiding places you'd decided on earlier. If all goes well it should be almost anti-climax. If you have access to a laboratory or machine shop or computer server room or something similar, so much the better. You'll find lots of good hiding places there. Stock rooms can be even better, although many are off-limits to most employees. If you eat out at lunch or dinner, hide a few eggs around the restaurant. Helpful hints: If the restaurant is fancy enough to have table cloths, that makes it easy to duct-tape eggs to the underside of the table since the cloth hides what you're doing. Once the egg is there it's unlikely to be noticed, because people seldom pay attention to that area. If there's no table cloth it's harder to stick the eggs under the table without people noticing, but it can be done. The trick is to act naturally and not draw attention to yourself. The seat cushions in many restaurant booths can be lifted to reveal a space almost nobody ever looks in. It can be hard to move the cushion without masking a bit of noise, although one tactic that sometimes works is to have a confederate create a distraction at the other side of the room to draw attention away from what you're doing. Also, the locks on the paper towel dispensers in many restrooms are easy to pick with simple tools such as bent paper clips. There is often enough room inside the dispenser for an egg or two. If you go out for drinks after work, hide some eggs around the bar. Depending on the sizes of the eggs you have (not all will fit), when you leave to go home you might want to hide some up the exhaust pipes of cars in the parking area. If you miss April First, don't despair. Some versions of the tradition allow eggs to be hidden on any April day preceding Easter Sunday. By the way, it's best to hard-boil your eggs. That way if one gets broken it won't make as much of a mess. Did someone ask about hunting for the eggs? The traditions are less clear on that. I suppose people can hunt for the eggs if they really want to. And while I do think it's sort of cheating to look for them before Easter Sunday, you can't be blamed if you happen upon an egg or two by chance while doing something else. Any eggs that aren't found on Easter will probably be picked up by the janitors over the next few months. Ideally they should all be gone by Christmas, although if they aren't it's not really your problem. Those that aren't found this year can wait until another April Easter. Happy April Easter egging! ********************* I'm reminded of a question about April Fool etiquette. I've always seen it as light-hearted fun. Thus as soon as the victim starts to catch on, the person pulling the prank is supposed to admit it. But I've seen instances where the perpetrator keeps insisting "This is not a April Fool," as the victim gets more and more stressed out. To me that takes the fun out of it. What are everybody else's thoughts on this? ********************* During a lull at a party I picked up a Star Trek novel that happened to be lying on a table. On the cover it was labeled as being "new", but on the inside it had a 1986 publication date. And when I looked it up in Wikipedia I found mention of several dozen Star Trek novels published after that one. So it clearly isn't new any more, even if it was when that copy was printed. So why does the cover still say it's "new"? Isn't that deceptive advertising? The problem is the technology. Static ink-on-paper book covers can't update themselves. Thus, as in this example, they can't relinquish claims of newness as subsequent titles are released. But that may change in the future, at least for future publications. With the new "electronic paper" technology now nearing fruition, a book's cover could refresh itself as the situation changed. It could claim to be "new" when it first came out, but would not continue to make that claim after the next title appeared. My thought was that the book would periodically check with the publisher for updates to its cover, but that might not be cost-effective for the relatively small benefit. So maybe it would just have a timer. It would know when the next book in the series was scheduled, and would switch from claiming to be "new" to reminding the reader to check for later titles in the series at the appropriate time. And it occurred to me that the notation could change from "NEW" to "Not Particularly Noteworthy" to "Out of Print" and eventually to "Rare Out-of-Print Collectible". That last might be useful in the used-book market. Another thought: You may not need electronics at all. Just print the word "NEW" with long-term disappearing ink that will fade over the subsequent year or so. If you also have inks that are invisible at first but become visible later, you can use those for the stuff that appears during subsequent phases of the book's life cycle. That may be more cost- effective than putting in all that electronic stuff. Whichever way the technology goes, when can we expect to see this? ********************* I got another April Fool thought too late to do much with this year, but maybe something can be done with it next year: The Homeland Security people's plans to regulate Easter egg hunts to keep people from hiding fake eggs with explosives or other bad things inside. Eggs would be standardized for ease of inspection. The rules would probably require artificial eggs only, below some maximum size, and with a transparent plastic shell to make it easier to inspect the contents. In addition the people hiding the eggs would be licensed, and any event involving Easter eggs would require a permit. Also, a map showing the locations of all hiding places would have to be filed, with those eggs that have been found checked off. Just another step toward making the world safer. ********************* "I heard Joe was in court for something or other." "Yes. They ended up giving him the electric chair." "What!? I didn't think it was that serious. Wasn't it supposed to be some kind of civil matter? How did it get to be a death penalty case? I thought they'd abolished that." "It's a long story, but they did give him the electric chair, even though he hadn't been convicted of anything. It sounds odd, but that's what they did. And yes, they had supposedly eliminated the death penalty." "So what's it all about?" "Remember a while back when the state prison sold off a bunch of surplus equipment?" "Yes, I think so." "The collectibles dealer who bought most of it went bankrupt. Joe was one of the creditors, and agreed to take some of the merchandise to settle the debt. So the bankruptcy court gave him the electric chair. He put it in his basement, and did up the rest of the area to look like a haunted house or dungeon or something. No, the chair isn't really hooked up to any electricity or anything, but there is a big dramatic-looking switch right next to it that dims the lights and sets off sound effects and mad-scientist-type spark generators and such." "Sounds like just the thing for Halloween. But what about the rest of the year?" "It gets mixed reactions when he invites people over. But people who aren't into that kind of thing don't have to go down to his basement." "Oh." ********************* I've noticed that when I'm deciding whether to attempt something, part of the decision-making process includes coming up with a plan of how I'm going to do it. Apparently not everybody does this. I may not always do it myself, but I often do. I just became conscious of this recently. As a party was breaking up someone asked if I could give them a ride home. My first impulse was to figure out what route I would take and use that as part of the basis for deciding, so I asked her where she lived. Another person then chimed in with "It's about five minutes out of your way." That may have been accurate (I didn't time the drive to verify it) but I didn't consider it useful information because it didn't help me to plan the route. The person who wanted the ride then gave me the names of the major cross streets closest to her place. With that information I was able to form a mental picture of the route there and my route home afterward, and I could see that it was indeed a simple task. So I did it. Before I figured out the route it felt like I was being asked to commit to some sort of scary leap into the unknown. Does this kind of thing enter into your decision-making? ********************* Someone I know recently built a model of a Dalek for a science fiction convention. That got me to thinking. Suppose some scientist, mad or otherwise, manages to capture and reverse-engineer a real Dalek. He then starts making scaled-down copies, probably ranging from the size of a drinking glass or maybe a salt shaker down to thimble-sized or even smaller. And suppose he is able to change their programming so they don't try to exterminate humans. Or maybe all Daleks are already programmed to concentrate on exterminating things their own size, and to the miniature Daleks a human is some kind of monster that's too big to exterminate, or should be treated like an ally, or something like that. So anyway, he has this horde of miniature Daleks, and sets them loose to exterminate the various kinds of vermin that have been infesting his mad-scientist castle. I would expect this endeavor to be mostly successful, but it might have problems. The main concern is that there are some small animals, such as lab rats and pet kittens and such, that you don't want exterminated. The experimental animals are mostly kept in cages, so you're OK as long as the mini-Daleks don't get into the rooms where the cages are. The kittens are a bit more of a problem, but again one solution is to keep them and the Daleks apart. Problem there is that that's far from being foolproof, knowing how good cats can be at getting into stuff. Even worse is keeping the Daleks from messing with wild animals you don't want killed off, such as song birds. If you can't keep your mini-Daleks indoors, you may need to come up with a way to alter their programming. Is it feasible to give them lists of things to kill and things to leave alone? If not, you'd better make darn sure they don't escape into the wilderness. And even if you can program them to leave birds alone, it's much harder to make them smart enough to spare field mice while wiping out the mice infesting the buildings. Maybe the solution is to program them to stay indoors, or within some other distance limit? And how small can a Dalek be? Is a salt-shaker-sized Dalek feasible? Thimble-sized? Smaller? What sets the limit? The number of bits of memory and such on a chip? Or will you run into limits on mechanical parts first? Batteries or other energy storage? Does the canon say how Daleks are powered? This may warrant further thought. ********************* On Being Asked for Advice by Another Poet The swirling mists of your mind slow and solidify And fade into colors your eyes have known As the world returns to consciousness And one of the doctors standing over you says, "Congratulations! It's a poem!" You hold it close, As it nuzzles your chest, Feeding on your heartbeats. Then monsters begin to stir in the shadows. They circle closer, whispering questions: "Are you sure this is what you want?" "How do you know it's good enough?" "How do you know you're good enough?" You call out to your kinfolk. "Is this poem truly what it needs to be? Is it ready to be sent out into the world? Or does its hair need to be combed, Its nails trimmed, Its shoes polished?" I stand there by your side, At a loss for words. The request stirs up all sorts of emotions. Its awesome responsibility scares me. What if some comment I chance to make turns out to be ill-advised, or perhaps through no fault of its own is misunderstood? It could leave things worse off than had I not ventured to comment at all. All poetry is Rorschach tests, and I'm not even sure I know what I see in this. So how can I say what the shapes should be shoved around to show? There is something hiding underneath that may be a part of both of us. Or it may be mine alone. Or it may not be at all. Or perhaps it is the truth, but has been deluded into believing it is me. I am more at home in the left-brain lands. Were I to suggest changes to the maps of this shimmering shadowy Terra Incognita I might lead other wanderers astray. And even were I to map it truly and well, Would it stay there? The expiration dates on maps of this realm May be measured in milliseconds. So all I can say is to follow your heart. It is the only lamp that shines true here. -- Thomas G. Digby Portions written 14:59 03/25/2011 Remainder done 00:06 04/06/2011 ********************* HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU There are two email lists, one that allows reader comments and one that does not. Both are linked from http://www.plergb.com/Mail_Lists/Silicon_Soapware_Zine-Pages.html If you are already receiving Silicon Soapware and want to unsubscribe or otherwise change settings, the relevant URL should be in the footer appended to the end of this section in the copy you received. Or you can use the above URL to navigate to the appropriate subscription form, which will also allow you to cancel your subscription or change your settings. -- END --