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Disclaimer: if you haven’t seen The Matrix, you might not fully appreciate this blog post. Remember to watch only the first movie.

How did the people progress from how we are now to how they were in the movie The Matrix?

Simple: gradually.

You start with nothing – content and complete by yourself.

Then you add in an audio connection to devices – iPod.
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It is tempting to give an electronics device (iPad, Kindle Fire, anything else that has games) of some sort to youngsters who act up, in order to get them to sit still at an event.

But don’t.

That ends up being a reward for misbehaving. It should be this: sit still, and then you can play afterwards. Not this: you get to play if you’re being disruptive.

Which behavior do want to reinforce?

If I may try an analogy here: Raising kids is like firing a gun. Assume the kid is the bullet. You as a parent have a target for them to hit.

You do have a target, right?

Even if it is just “to become a productive member of society”, you should have a goal. You should have a plan to reach that goal, too. But that’s another topic.

So you want your kids to hit the target. The target is a long way off. What does a bullet need in order to reach the target?

Two main things: propulsion and constraint.

I’ll skip propulsion – the point of this post is boundaries. Constraint is the boundaries you give them.

A gun with a short barrel is inaccurate – the bullet has a low chance of hitting the target. Similarly, a child with no boundaries is going to veer off somewhere.

When is it easiest to correct the course of a bullet – at the beginning of its travel or near the end of its travel? At the beginning, I would expect. I’ve never tried to correct a bullet at the end of its travel. The same applies to people. Get them on the right course early, and it will save you and them much effort and grief later.

The right course at hand for this topic is being able to survive without being amused by a glowing screen.

And if you’re not familiar with the etymology of amuse, you should be.

In the interest of combining things (“leveraging technology” if you want the appropriate buzzwords), I thought through how wind turbines could sell advertisements.

By “wind turbines” I am referring to the tall, 3-vaned, modern-looking windmills that generate electricity (and kill birds) and are popping up in more and more places.

In fact, my niece plays soccer in the shadows of a few of these.

Now for the advertisements. If you’re not familiar with the concept of Persistence of Vision, here’s an example:

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Welcome back, those of you who read Part 1 of my recap.

This part, the second and final of the set, concerns the airplane portion of the trip.

• It had been several years since I was on an international flight, and the entertainment options are vastly improved since then. Now, you get a USB plug to charge your devices, WiFi if you want to pay for it, and about 50 movies that you can watch and control for yourself, thanks to touchscreens in every seat. More on that later…
• Regarding airplane food, avoid the entree with meat. On the way over, I chose chicken instead of pasta. That was a bad choice – the chicken was rubbery and not tasty. On the way back, they were out of the pasta by the time they got to me, but they did have a Cobb salad. The chicken on that had been cooked but was cold on the salad. That was fine. Apparently chicken cooked before getting on the plane is okay, but chicken cooked (or at least heated) on the plane is not. That’s my assessment having had one of each.
• Here’s a photo for those of you who have forgotten what it’s like to fly:

  

• Here is a photo of my first sight of the Netherlands:

  

• It was fun trying to guess which lines were roads and which were canals:

  

• And here is a photo of our plane landing:

  

• One thing that struck me on the flight back was how mindlessly passive everyone was. The flight there was an overnight, so I watched a movie because it was novel and I could, then I tried to sleep. Then I read and tried to sleep again. After sleeping and eating, I watched one more quick movie before landing. So I didn’t notice that the whole plane was dark because it was night and it was supposed to be dark.

  But the flight back was a daytime flight – it was midday the whole time. Left at 1pm, flew for 9 hours, and landed at 3 pm – following the sun the whole way. Almost kept up with it, too. So I expected the plane to have some daylight.

  But for various reasons, they ask people to close their window shades closed so the plane stays dark. The reason stated was so that people can watch movies without glare. But I suppose some people who wanted to nap would appreciate it too.

  And I just thought that was sad. “Here’s a window seat so you can look out at the glorious sunshine if you want – but don’t. We don’t want you to.” I watched a movie, then I read, then I scribbled some notes and stuff. I had to turn on my overhead light to read and write, which I shouldn’t have needed to do because there was plenty of sunshine available.

  Out of several dozen other seats that I could see, only a handful of other people had their lights on. As best I could tell, all the rest were watching movies or TV shows. I’ll agree to some entertainment – I watched 3.5 movies on my round trip. But that’s about 5.5 hours of screen time out of 18 hours flight time. That’s still a lot of sitting and watching, but I didn’t have much of a choice on the sitting part.

  As I was looking around, in awe of how people were able to watch movies for 8 hours non-stop, I thought “how mindless is this?” I made a choice specifically not to watch a screen for a chunk of the time. That was harder than you might think, because as I am writing, my habit is to look up when I pause to think between items. And, even though I had turned off my screen, my eyes were naturally caught by the bright glow of the screen of the woman in front and to the right of me. And she had the closed-captioning on, so my eyes caught some bad words, too.

  In summary for this point, I am worried about our society, that people aren’t going to be able to do anything (or sit quietly) if it’s not on a screen in front of them.

• Here’s my view during the flight home:

  

• In case you’re wondering, the movies I watched were The Boxtrolls, Kiki’s Delivery Service, How to Train Your Dragon 2, and half of Captain Phillips.

For work, I had to go to the Birmingham area.

Birmingham, England.

Once we (my co-workers and I) arrived, we made our way to the hotel – Village Urban Resort. I guess they call it a resort because it has a restaurant and a fitness center attached – not the stereotypical image of a resort having palm trees and outdoor pools and spas and such.

Now for various things I observed on the trip:

• I appreciated that everything at the hotel started with the same letter, specifically V.

  Village hotel, Velocity fitness center (AKA gym), Verve restaurant, Victory pub. I was disappointed when someone pointed out that their conference center is called The Hub

• I also appreciated their cold water. The water coming out of the bathroom sink was the coldest I can remember. I suspect they increased the air pressure in the rooms so they could allow the water temperature to be below freezing.
• Everyone in Europe uses credit cards with chips instead of magnetic stripes. Everyone taking our cards assumed a chip and put the card in a chip reader, and we had to tell them to swipe it instead. And their reactions were always along the lines of “Oh, I haven’t had to do that in years!” And it would take them a few tries to get it to go through.
• Our first night we had dinner at Miller and Carter. Ignore whatever people say about British food – that was the best steak I ever had.
• Our second night we went to Jimmy Spices. Avoid that place if possible. It’s an international buffet – they have a variety of foods from all over. It’s all-you-can-eat, and the emphasis is on quantity over quality. And it’s not that much cheaper than a quality place. Note: they have the driest brownies ever. Not hard, just dry.
• The next night we went back to Miller and Carter. The other guys got the same thing they got the first night, but I opted for the salmon. It was fine, with a nice presentation, but it wasn’t worth it. I would have rather had the steak again.
• The steak was around $30. I could enjoy eating that steak because it was on the company dime. Or many dimes, I suppose. I would have enjoyed the steak even if I had paid my own money for it. While $30 is high for a meal, I know there are steak places around home that will charge $50+ for a steak meal. And I can’t imagine getting double the enjoyment or nutrition out of that steak compared to the $30 steak.
• The next night, we went to The Farm Inn. They had more variety than Miller and Carter, and everyone liked the food.
• The next night, we went into Dickens Heath and ate at Giovanni’s. That was an Italian place, of course. The owner/operator had a thick Italian accent, but his wife had a Scottish accent. The food selection was limited, but the quality of the food made up for it. I’ve had smoked salmon before, but it has always tasted more like raw fish and I didn’t like it. I tried the smoked salmon on the appetizer sampler at Giovanni’s and it was quite good. I did not try the mussels, but others did and they said they were the best they’ve had – “the first time I’ve had mussels that weren’t rubbery”.
• The last night, we tried to go to Morton’s, which is right next door to Giovanni’s. Unfortunately, this was a Friday night. Whereas both places were sparsely populated during the week before now, this was the start of the weekend so it was different. The place was standing room only. We did not have reservations (or, as they asked us “Are you booked?”) so we were turned away.
• We left Dickens Heath, not wanting to go to Giovanni’s two nights in a row, and went back to Miller and Carter. I got steak this time, not wanting to miss out on another chance at the best steak I’ve ever had. This time, however, I got the fillet (pronounced as fill-it there – the British are decidedly not French) instead of the ribeye. I must say I preferred the ribeye. I’m not a fan of the texture of a fillet – it seemed squishy. Some people might call that tender, but to me it’s squishy.
• The desserts were also very good at Miller and Carter. We all got different things and everyone was pleased with them.
• We did more than eat while we were there, but I’m guessing that most people reading this don’t want to hear about our meetings discussing motor control software.
• I didn’t drive in England, but I was a passenger of the guy who was driving for the first time on the left side of the road. Driving is intense in England because there are no pauses. Here in the US, there are plenty of stop signs or stop lights – you get a few seconds to stop and look at road signs or think about your next traffic decision. In England though, with all the roundabouts, you can make your whole trip without ever stopping at all, so you need to know what you’re doing ahead of time.
• And if you ever drive in England, it’s good to know that you are not allowed to turn on red. They do occasionally have a traffic light. But no turns on red, unlike here.

Stay tuned for the next installment – the airplane.

Beta : Dad, can you fix the clock?
Me : Sure, but why is it not working?
Beta : My slider got away from me…

That was in the living room. Not the best place for pitching practice.

Gamma, pointing to a globe : What’s that line?
Me : That’s the equator.
Gamma : What’s the equator?
Me : It’s the middle of the earth.
Gamma : Then where’s the hot lava?
Me : That’s the middle of the inside of the earth. The equator shows the middle of the outside of the earth.

Me : Delta, what are you thankful for?
Delta : Lava.
Me : Okay. How about you, Gamma?

Delta’s answer to most things is “lava”.

Gamma : What’s the opposite of orange juice?
Me : Umm, apple slices.
Gamma : What’s the opposite of lemonade?
Me : Chocolate.

Gamma : Is fish the opposite of less?
Me : ???
Gamma : Because selfish is the opposite of selfless.
Me : Actually, it’s ish. Self-ish. So that would make ish synonymous with more.

Gamma : I just counted to 1000!
Alpha : You did not. That was too quick. What were you counting by?
Gamma : Thousands.

If it looks like a lot of quotes from Gamma, that’s because he’s doing a lot of talking.

Everyone familiar with timed sports (football, basketball, hockey, etc.) knows that the last minute of the game lasts a lot longer than the first minute of the game.

But how bad is it? And how does it change during the game?

I thought I would put together a chart showing the concept. I don’t have any actual data – I’m just going off my instinct here.

Maybe the chart is skewed toward the worst case, not average. For example, how long – real time – does the last 10 seconds of a close NBA game take? How many plays can occur in the last 15 seconds of an NFL game if a team is trying to rally a win? That is what I was thinking when I chose the Y-axis scale of multiples of game time. If 15 seconds of the game clock takes 2 minutes of my life, that’s a scale of 8x.

One of the more annoying aspects of sports is the delay that is part of the game but shouldn’t be. Example #1: intentional fouling near the end of a basketball game. Example #2: trying to ice the kicker for field goals in a football game. I hope at some point they change the rules to forbid those.

Any recommendations for the Y-axis scale?
Any other proposed changes to the rules to make the ends of games less annoying to the fans?