General Conference, Interstellar travel, uncomfortable truths (SongPiper)

General Conference today and yesterday. Now you can get it at any time by going to www.byu.tv. I love it. We decided to put the TV into the closet and take a more active roll in deciding what to take into our home. We want a way of finding out about the best things out there so that we can get them in our own time and in our own way. Also I've been using a neat site called Reddit as a source of news etc. But, after a couple too many surprises from following links, I've decided to stop using it. The key to sites like that seems to be finding one where the people who use it share both your interests and values. If I find one I will be all over it. For now I guess I'll go to the Economist for non-local news.

Interstellar travel

So I was quizzing the kids on the planets today and it got me to thinking about space. You know, the closest stars are still amazingly far away at a bit over 4 light years. It would be pretty cool to get a robot out there . . .

Anyway, I think the chances of finding anything as nice as earth anywhere close are astronomically low. So if we want to be settling other places it seems to me that we need to learn how to thrive in environments that aren't all that hospitable. It would be pretty interesting just to see how much we could do in Antarctica or under the earth or something. What would it mean to thrive? If we're talking about eventual space colonization it would mean getting to the point where you can grow and reproduce without much help. If we could make settlements on the moon or on Mars that could grow on their own then I would start to feel excited about the possibility of spreading out a bit.

I think it's cool stuff. Cool from the perspective of technical challenges, of human challenges, and of open-ended opportunity. The whole idea reminds me a little of the LDS pioneers making their way out to a barren wasteland and settling it and making a beautiful place to live.

SongPiper

Ok, so last week I talked about trying to make this whole SongPiper thing into a game with points. Well, having website means that we get immediate feedback on things like # visits, and visit depth. I think we can monitor the number of links to our site. Also if we made our games web based could we measure the time that people spend playing them? I could change the games over time trying to optimize that parameter with the idea that it gives some indication of the value people give to playing the game. So that is the direction that we are thinking in.

I figure that watching a few kids without much time playing around with things they know nothing about might be a little boring. But there it is. This blog is called Diligence and Temperance. If that isn't a promise of an unexciting ride what is!

Seriously though, the blog isn't earning its name. Rather, my actions aren't earning the name. The name should rather be “wandering about learning a lot but not sure where to go or how bad I want to get there.” The concept from the beginning was to answer the question of what one could do with an hour a day if one applied the dual concepts of diligence and temperance. I believe that one can accomplish a lot. I felt like I did accomplish a lot. But that ended somewhere in June, after only 3.5 months of progress. Then my clear initial goal had been accomplished and I looked around and found myself unsure of where to go next. And I failed to meet my short term goals for July 15^th. Since then I haven't done much worth noting and writing the blog has become embarrassing because I make public my lack of direction.

But now there is some direction. We have some clear metrics that we can work on. I'm not sure that we are committed to working on them yet so perhaps that is the next step: to see if we are ready to take complete ownership of our metrics. If we do we will make the sacrifices to see them improve over time. If we don't we might as well not waste our time with anything else. We have busy, full, interesting lives. There is no reason to pretend to do something we aren't going to do.

Let us see what happens.

Doug