Splitting Up.

I have been neglecting this blog most terribly, and for that I'm sorry.  The fact is, the current semester is quite demanding, and I really haven't had time to reflect upon the technological aspects of what I'm learning about.  Rather than simply shutting down this blog, however, I am optimistic that things will change by Christmas.  To that end, I have started another blog, The Growing Librarian, and I will split my reflections between the two blogs.  Reflections centering around technology will be explored here, at Sci-Fi Now.  If all goes well, by this time next year, I will be a school librarian, helping students grow into inquisitive adults -- hopefully with better success than I've had with my garden.  The Growing Librarian will focus on my garden of learners, what we're doing and exchanging ideas with others in the field.

All that is in the future though.  As I said earlier, this semester is proving to be quite a challenge, so I am unlikely to get any more blogs out until some time in December.  Here's wishing everyone a good and productive sprint to the end of the semester.

Simple but Important Details

This morning, my son was faced with a terrible decision.  He could deny Mommy privacy in the bathroom, or play with Roomba Rita.  At two years old, he isn't much for delayed gratification, so he went to the office, picked up the Roomba and "her" charging station, and brought them into the bathroom to be with me.  Had he just wanted to run the vacuum, all would be well -- but he tried to dock her and was getting very upset when she wouldn't do it.  His problem: when he picked up the charging station, he detached the power cord.  Without power, the Roomba didn't know the charging station wasn't just another toy.

My son's favorite toy is a robotic vacuum from iRobot.  How sci-fi is that!  Getting back to the point though, he was flipping out because he didn't understand that the power cord was important.  Later, when I was swapping out DVD players in an upstairs bedroom, I had trouble getting an image on the screen.  What important detail had I missed?  The old machine had used one video connection, and the new machine was using another -- I had forgotten to detach the old video cable from the TV when I attached the new one, and the TV was trying to use the old connection.  Had I been looking at the connections directly, I wouldn't have missed that -- but it was in a tight spot and I was using a small hand mirror to find my connections.  Lately, this sort of thing has been happening a lot - a dail not set, a laptop under a poster, an MP3 player in the gym shoes....

Why am I telling you this?  It's all about resiliency.  When you try to do something, if it doesn't work the way you expected, stay calm -- it may be a simple but important detail.  I believe it was Dune that told us that fear is the mind killer -- well, so is panic and anger.  If we can stay calm in the face of life's problems, we will often find that our problem will be solved with the addition, or subtraction, or a cable.  Proverbial or otherwise.

Getting Back to the Future

I'm currently reading Educating for Global Competence by Veronica Boix-Mansilla and Tony Jackson, but I keep getting distracted by one thing: the sci-fi tie-in.  Thus far, chapter 1 is talking about how the world is getting flatter -- which I would have called getting smaller.  People are migrating faster than ever before, employers are employing, manufacturing, and selling internationally, and we have to figure out how to prepare kids for the rapidly evolving world that they'll be faced with by the time they graduate.  All this boils down to a global economy of minds, people, and money where national borders mean less now than they ever have before.  If this is, indeed, what is happening, then take this progression a step farther into the future, and we'll find that national borders will have about as much significance as state borders have now.  Each country will have its own laws, language, and identity, but being a world citizen will be the more common way of self-identification.

The thing is, in just about every science fiction book I can think of where space travel exists and there have probably been encounters with aliens, Earth is ruled by a global government.  In one of those books, I would be a "citizen of Earth," an "Earthling" or possibly a "Terran".  Only in stories set in the near future would someone like me consider themselves to be an American, and it would probably have to be a time travel or post-appocolyptic tale for me to identify myself as a Marylander.

So, are we truly moving toward a world government?  I might not mind it if we are.  Taking another look at those stories, you'll frequently also find that good ol' Earth (or Terra) has moved beyond the need to make war on itself.  We must remember, though, that all the cultures of the world are well worth preserving.  Diversity is a beautiful thing, and when we try to stir the melting pot to such an extent that peoples' rich backgrounds are stripped away, we trade something precious for something both uniform and dull.

January is for Resolutions

Just about everyone I know makes New Year's Resolutions, and (anecdotally at least) the most popular resolution is for weight loss.  While I hate to be a conformist, I've made that resolution (again) this year.  I mention this here for two reasons.  1) I've heard that sharing wight loss goals can increase the likelihood of success, & 2) technology is helping me achieve my goals.

As you can see from my picture, I'm no lightweight.  I really want to drop 100 pounds, but I don't want to do it too fast because I want to keep the weight off, and I want to keep making milk to comfort my son with until I successfully ween him (another 2014 resolution).  To achieve these goals, I'm using Lose It! -- just not in the way the designers intended.  I entered my current weight, my goal weight, and selected that I wanted to loose 1/2 pound each week.  The app gave me the date at which I would achieve my goal, and, seeing that it was near my birthday in 2017, I made it my goal to reach my weightless goal by my birthday in that year.

Since I hate doing a food log (How much is on my plate?  How do I record this old family recipe?), whenever the app says I'll achieve my goal after my goal date, I'm supposed to fill in the in-app food log, abide by the calorie budget, and try to keep my protein above my carbs, until I move the achievement date back to where I want it.  Unfortunately, the holidays were not kind, and I haven't been good about logging when I'm beyond my goal weight.  It seems that what they say is true - even when you eat healthy things, if you eat too much, you'll gain weight.  Anyway, while this is an excellent weight loss tool, I find that I'm only reliably using the target date feature.

So, that's what I've resolved to do for the next several years -- stay on target for an eventual weight loss win.  If you've made a similar resolution, here's hoping you find a tool that works for you as well.  I blew my weight budget this New Year's, but have managed to drop much of this party-weight over the past few days.  Lose It! tells me that, as of this morning, I'll achieve my goal about a month beyond when I want to... so I need to drop two more pounds to get back on track.  Personally, I think that 2 pounds is much more achievable than 100, and I'm optimistic that using this technological tool will keep me on target.

I guess this is the true test for any technology's adoption.  Whatever the new thing is, its good when you can play with it and find the feature or features that really work for you.  For some people, the food log is necessary - but for me, simply knowing if I'm on or off target is enough to inform my eating and exercise choices.  While it is good to know everything that a particular piece of technology can do, so you can try things that may improve your workflow or recreational enjoyment, we should only use the tools that actually help us.  Any tool that doesn't improve our lives will actually hinder them - wasting time and increasing frustration.

So... whatever your goals for 2014, be sure to evaluate the tools you're using to achieve your goals - and don't waste your time on things that don't help YOU.