In the end, I will breathe my last breath knowing I will never have to touch another %^&# lawnmower again.
Author: Doug McCaughan
Father of 5.
Juggler.
Ticked off at blogger.com.
I won a live journaling camera!
I’m so jazzed! I won a Narrative Clip 2! (a life journaling camera) Many thanks to @getnarrative @narrativeclip
Announced on Narrative’s blog.
Autonomous cars are so close to reality
When I declared automated cars to be on our roads within 5 years and highly adopted in 10 years with private transportation becoming obsolete in 15-20 years, my friends looked at me like I was nuts and an overoptimistic technologist.
Mark my words, a transportation revolution is happening and most people are completely unaware how fast it is coming.
Telsa has joined the ranks of autonomous vehicles: Tesla Testing Software For Autopilot Trips Between Seattle & San Francisco
Elon Musk’s promise to deliver a fully functional self-driving car within the near future appears to have some truth to it — it seems to have not been an exaggeration, in other words (despite his habit of overstating things). The company has reportedly begun testing software that will allow the Model S to “drive itself” all the way from San Francisco to Seattle.
I so welcome it. The ramifications of autonomous vehicles is huge! Think of the infrastructure changes alone:
- No more parking lots. (turn mall parking lots into actual parks)
- No more signage = prettier cities.
- No more painted roads.
- Narrower and fewer roads = less maintenance, less environmental impact.
- No more DUIs.
- No more road rage.
- No more divided highways (the cars negotiate the number of lanes each direction as demand dictates)
- No more stress of ownership (ie. no more insurance, unexpected repairs when payday is still weeks away, worry over other’s ruining your vehicle by running into you)
- No more accidents.
- The elderly can become mobile again.
- Special needs (mentally, disabled, blind, etc) people who previously could not drive will have refound freedom.
- Greater quality time on commutes. (Trips to work can be productive. You can sleep on the long commute to granny’s house. Practice guitar while passengering to that gig. Play cars with your child instead of demanding they play the alphabet game once more time.)
- Moving vans delivered to your door. (Want to move a bedroom suite from Cincinnati to Knoxville? Have Penske autodeliver a truck to the house in Knox then let the truck take you to Cincinnati, load, and the truck returns you or better yet just send the truck to Cincinnati and have locals load it.)
So many possibilities!
Getting thrify
I have decided to become a bit more thrifty. Once upon a time some blue moon ago I couponed. Not like Coupon Katie or the serious couponers but enough to make a difference. I am redoubling my efforts! Yesterday I used 2, count em, 2 coupons! Yeah me.
Power tools under used (mostly to look at pictures of cats)
Q: If someone from the 1950s suddenly appeared today, what would be the most difficult thing to explain to them about life today?
A: I possess a device, in my pocket, that is capable of accessing the entirety of information known to man.
I use it to look at pictures of cats and get in arguments with strangers. (by user nuseramed)
I purchased the Omnigroup tools to get my professional (and personal) life in order. I am now heavily using Omnifocus and loving it! One of my favorite features of Omnifocus is the location based reminders. I can set a reminder for the Office so that when I arrive at work, the reminder pops up on my phone (and in turn on my Pebble watch). Now wait, doesn’t the iPhone have this same functionality in its built-in Reminders app? Yes it does! But I’ve never used it. Omnifocus differs from Reminders in functionality. Apparently the iPhone Reminders app has a tighter radius on the location awareness. Back to function. Reminders is simply a reminders list. Omnifocus is adaptable to whichever productivity management style you have. It was written primarily with Getting Things Done in mind but will work well with Covey’s First Things First and many of the other productivity structures out there.
I find myself leaving my Narrative camera at the office frequently. Today I decided to setup a location aware reminder in the iPhone Reminders app to warn me when leaving the office with a daily reminder "Got Narrative?"
Why did I choose Reminders over Omnifocus? Simply because when I look at my list of daily todos, I do not want it cluttered with a recurring reminder to do simple things. However, I want that daily reminder to do simple things and this is a fantastic use of Reminders. I will be using this heavily now. I will use the location aware contexts of Omnifocus for important reminders that do not regularly recur such as "Drop child’s lunch check off at the elementary school" which would pop up as I drove by the school on the way to work.
We have these amazing tools for enhancing our lives but rarely exploit a fraction of their full potential. I bet your DSLR has a manual’s worth of menus and settings you’ve never even thought to explore. When I speak of smart homes, automation, and a technological society, these simple tools like the iPhone’s Reminders program are much of what I am referring to.
Did I take my medicine?
As I sit here pondering whether or not I’ve taken my blood pressure medicine today, I discovered Timer Caps and bottles (Qty 2) – Child-resistant caps (CRC) with a built-in stopwatch LCD display, for pills and vitamins.
Last chance to earn discounts toward a Narrative Clip v2
The Narrative Clip is drawing to a close. Click here to learn more. Enter your email address and both you and I can earn discounts toward the purchase of a Narrative Clip v2. What is Narrative Clip? Basically it is a camera that you wear which takes a pictures every 30 seconds. What it means is that you preserve those special moments in your life (particularly good for parents) without being distracted by holding a camera or camera phone between you and the event. It’s great for life journaling. By using my Narrative, I became acutely aware that I was spending too much time in grocery stores and changed my habits to regain time in my life. I highly recommend the Narrative Clip!
Protected: Confessions of a programmer
Of Grasshoppers
Student: Am I tired or weak?
Master: Does it have to be one or another?
Blogging is not dead
Blogging is not dead. It’s just hard work. I’d explain, but that would take some effort.
Baked
Sometimes I smell cake for no apparent reason. I think it means my mind is cooked.
Confessions of a programmer
My job does not pay me enough to afford the quantity of alcohol required to do my job. #coap
Watching Nobody
I want to add security cameras inside my house because I want to kick Nobody out.
Bright and early
The students are on spring break. Amy’s school offered a trip to Washington D.C. so she got on a bus at 11pm Friday and returned at 5am today. Only the bus on Friday was an hour late and today it was an hour early. Amy, "I told Mom it was early." Me, "Did she reply? Considering she leaves her phone upstairs at night, perhaps you should have contacted both of us." Amy was not the last to be picked up but I had really hoped to have arrived at the school well before the bus. I like to step up and help unload luggage and talk to the other parents but c’est la vie. She had an amazing trip. And being up this early has reminded me just how much I enjoyed starting my day at 4am in the past. I’m just not certain I can do this on a regular basis.
And thus the water wars began…
NASA scientist declares .
“And thus, the water wars. By 2017 mankind had scurried to build pipelines in an attempt to move water from one side of the country to another. Environmentalists stayed silent as bulldozers and eminent domain tore through protected lands and national parks in a attempt to settle the anarchy which had befallen California. By 2018, millions of Californians had died and the first water trickled through the continental pipeline. Between 2015 and 2018, naturally scientists and companies looked to the Pacific Ocean for desalinization but our technology just wasn’t ready. By 2019, the national stabilized. California’s water rationing was released and the remaining residents filled their pools, and greened their lawns. By 2020, the areas of the United States feeding the great water pipeline began to feel the pain as water rationing was introduced in their counties. Domestic terrorists began strategic attacks upon the pipeline. Countries around the world began experiencing similar problems as the United States. Desalinization attempts were begun again. In 2022, only the superrich remained alive in California as they could truck water in. One entrepreneur recognizing the hopeless demise of the polar ice caps had begun a glacier harvesting operation to haul polar water to the United States. Other countries followed suit and by 2030, what remained of the polar ice caps was a polluted, pillaged, undrinkable mess riddled with blood and oil stains and slightly irradiated from the ice harvesting tools and skirmishes. In 2035, a lone man sat in a desert, protected only by shade he created with the remains of a raggedy Coleman tent. A single jet flew low overhead. Little did he know it was the last plane to ever flew. It had been on a scouting mission for drinkable water and the pilot, devoid of hope, crashed it into the ocean. The desert man hummed a mantra, withdrew a stick from his backpack, and proceeded to use his divining rod where he sat under his shade. The stick pulled to the ground. 10 minutes later, with minor effort of digging, the desert man quenched his thirst. …”
