S. Evan Townsend's Blog, page 20

Happy Light

Not only am I bipolar, but I also suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD); a rather appropriate acronym. This is where one gets depressed in the winter, probably due to the lack of sunshine (shorter days, more clouds, wear more clothes). This has also been called "the winter blues." All I knew what that in the winter I would suffer from depression a lot. This on top of bipolar depression. Not fun. And like all things with mental illness, it got worse as I got older.

Nine years ago, on the advice of my mother, I bought a full-spectrum light from a company called Verilux and put it by my desk when I spend most of my work days. It's not technically a "happy light" (which is a specific type of full-spectrum light that is designed for maximum light output) but a lamp that shines on my hands and arms as I type. But it seems to be enough because either because of it, or a psychosomatic effect, I feel better. I haven't suffered from SAD since I got it.

When I needed a light for reading, I also got a full-spectrum light. I figured it couldn't hurt to have more full-spectrum light.

So if you have the "winter blues," I strongly suggest that you get a full-spectrum light and put it where are are the most.

Do you have a full-spectrum light? What are your experiences with it? Let me know in the comments below.

Virtual Reading

I and a group of authors will be doing a virtual reading on ALTSpaceVR and anyone can attend. It will be Friday the 25th at 6pm PST. The link to get there is here. It would be fun to see you there!

RadCon 8B

Starting tomorrow and through Sunday, I will be at RadCon 8B in Tri-Cities, Washington. It will be held, as usual, at the Red Lion Inn in Pasco.

Here's my schedule of panels:

Friday 7:00PM: Pantsing or Outlining. In the Executive Room

Saturday at 11:00 AM: Defeating the Blank Page. In the Sage Room

Saturday at 2:00 PM: Point of View. Also in the Sage Room

Sunday at 11:00 AM: Creating a Low Barrier of Entry for your Readers. In the Harvest Room.

I hope to see you there. I'll have some swag and would love to meet you.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife

DVD.com deigned to send me Ghostbusters: Afterlife as soon as they released it. I guess I'm not being throttled right now. (Although this week they sent me the #11 and #12 movies in my queue.)

I was a little cautious approaching this movie. I don't like horror and the ads and trailers I saw indicated it was more horror than comedy, unlike the original Ghostbusters. 

And there is more serious content than the original movie, but it does have funny moments, too. It's much less serious than the ads and trailers I saw indicated. I enjoyed it but I didn't love it.

The story involves a family with an older kid played by Finn Wolfhard (of Stranger Things fame)(and where the hell is Stanger Things season four?) and a precocious twelve-year-old girl, Phoebe. They get kicked out of their house for not paying rent but, luckily, inherit the mother's father's farm in Oklahoma. That's where things get interesting. Phoebe, being the curious type, starts discovering things, clue that lead to her and her mother learning about their heritage and a threat to all of humanity. I'm trying to avoid spoilers  here.

It was well do. Using kids instead of adults made it more fun. Paul Rudd plays a bored science teacher who, at summer school, shows the kids horror movies (I would have been traumatized). I recommend Ghostbusters: Afterlife, especially if you liked the original movie (and who didn't?). 

Did you watch Ghostbusters: Afterlife? Did you like it? Let me know in the comments below.

The above photo is being used under Section 107 of the Copyright Act: fair usage.

I Remember Email

Back in 1994, someone introduced me to email on the computers at the University of Washington campus. I remember asking if it went "campus wide." I was told it went world-wide and I was impressed. So I set up an email account. I think it was stownsend@washington.edu.

Now, 28 years later, email is falling out of favor for texting. Although I don't know if I foresee businesses using texting rather than email. Maybe between employees casually, but not for official communications. Although I saw and ad for "Business Texting" for communicating with clients/customers. And I get texts all the time from people I do business with such as doctors, dentists, and car detailers. 

Email was such a revelation. I've been using it long enough to remember when people apologized for "wasting bandwidth" with long emails. I also remember when the size limit on attachments was so small you couldn't send two Word documents in the same email. Now I send 5 MB email attachments all the time.

I've never had a big problem with spam and I don't know why. I'm still hoping some genius will fix that problem. That and having to have a complicated password for everything, and none of them the same. I'm thinking biometric logins. 

But I'm off course. I still use email and I text and I Facebook message. What ever is most convenient at the time. But email might just become a business/government tool in the future. Especially if it comes that you can send files through text.

What do you think the fate of email will be? Do you use it less than you used to? Let me know in the comments below.

Time Zones

When I was in the military, we were very concerned with time zones because our intelligence came from all over the world. The Department of Defense assigned a letter to each time zone (at least the major ones) and UTC was "Z" or "zulu." (Most people call "UTC" "Greenwich Mean Time" but that's not its official name. It's actually "Coordinated Universal Time." So why "UTC"? That's explained here.)

There are only 26 letters in the alphabet and there are, if I counted correctly, 34 times zones. Most are off by an hour from their neighbors but some are off by half an hour and at least one is off by fifteen/forty-five minutes. 

I live in the Pacific Time Zone of the US which is eight hours behind of UTC (UTC -8) except during daylight saving time with it's seven hours behind (UTC -7).

The earliest time zone is UTC +14. That's Christmas Island in the Pacific Ocean. You'd think it'd be UTC +12 but it's 14 for some reason. I believe it's on the east side of the International Date Line.

The latest time zone is UTC -11. Again, why not -12? I don't know. That's for the island, Nuie, also in the Pacific Ocean. Probably also near the International Date Line

There are some weird time zones. For example, there is an Australian time zone that is UTC +8.75. There are a lot of time zones that are a half hour off everyone else. For example two in Australia (Australia has six time zones if I counted correctly), parts of India, at least parts of Afghanistan, and Iran, and Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada. 

There is a border you can walk across and get jet lag because the time zones are 4.5 hours apart (that's China and Afghanistan)(Assuming you could walk across that border). China has one time zone for the entire country, which must be convenient in some way yet weird in the western parts of the country.

Do you have to deal with time zones? Or are they just boring to you? Or do they confuse you? Let me know in the comments below.

Gas Prices

During the recent holiday season, I watched Die Hard, as I usually do.  There's on scene in the movie I found very disturbing. It's pictured at left. It's the gas prices shown that is disturbing. 

Now you can't get "Regular" anymore, because all gasolines have gone to unleaded. Today's "regular" is just lower octane unleaded. So I was curious, how much is 77 cents in today's inflation adjusted dollars. I used this inflation calculator and found out that it's $1.81. (Die Hard was made in 1988).

However, gas prices now are a lot more than $1.81. So I decided to see how gas prices have changed since 1988. I went to the Department of Energy website and it lists average gasoline prices historically, but only starting in April of 1993. So I started then. And then I adjusted them for inflation using data from this website. And I made a pretty graph of the data:

If you adjust the price of gasoline since April 1993 for inflation, that's the lower line. And the last number on that line (November of 2021) is exactly $1.81, which surprised me. But California has always had expensive gas. I'm not sure why except these days it has the highest gas taxes.

But gas goes up and down with the worldwide price of oil. And the price of oil went down during the first part of the pandemic because demand dropped so much. Then after the lock downs slowed, it shot up partly due to increased demand, partly due to the world oil market.

Also, I think gas is more expensive than in April of 1993 because of ethanol mandates and gas taxes.

So this was an interesting experiment. 

What do you think of this data? What do you think makes the price of gas change so much? let me know in the comments below.

TikTok... Sort Of

Due to the popularity (I suppose) of TikTok, Facebook/Instagram has started doing "Reels" which are basically TikTok-like short videos (some even say "TikTok" on them). YouTube has also gotten into the game with "Shorts." 

So I discovered Reels on my Facebook on my phone (it doesn't show up on my browser-based Facebook). And I started watching out of curiosity. And now I'm hooked.

I've learned a few things watching these "Reels." One: people say the f-word a lot. Two: about every third video has The No Song as a soundtrack. Which was cute the first 500 times. And three: Some people are idiots, driving very fast on crowded public roads. Like 150 mph fast (they show their speedometer). Some run from cops which, in my state, at least, is a felony.

Some people try to scam viewers. One told of a method to speed up your internet connection. I tried it. It kicked me off the internet. So I reversed what I did and everything was fine.

There's two annoying text-to-voice voices. One is a enthusiastic female, the other a baritone male.  Another annoying thing is you can't fast forward to the end or rewind to see something again. If it's a long video, that can be very frustrating.

It must be against the rules to have swear words in captions because people will say the swear word but the caption will have asterisks or another similar sounding word. Considering how much people swear on it, this surprises me.

And sometimes people make the same joke or claims as other people. The exact same joke. That's boring.

The algorithm has learned that I like cat videos and car videos, so I get a lot of those. And a lot of Tesla videos. Some people have too much money, it seems. One guy traded in his brand new Model S for the Tesla truck because he was bored with the Model S.

There are people you see over and over. Like the married couple I call "The adorable couple." They are so obviously in love with each other and so sweet to each other. And they are planning on having a baby this year. Yes, some people share too much.

But what I've also learned is... it's addictive. Sometimes you learn something useful. Sometimes you laugh. Sometimes you're like "WTF?"

Maybe someday I can beat my addiction to Reels. But for now, I just plan to enjoy it.

Do you watch TikTok or Reels or Shorts? What do you think about them? Let me know in the comments below.

Things I Invented

Happy 2022! 
I hope.
Now on with the blog.
Robert Heinlein is often credited with inventing the water bed in his novel Stranger in a Strange Land. He also invented the remote manipulator in 1942 (he called it a "waldo" after his fictional inventor).
Arthur C. Clark invented the geosynchronous satellite. Or at least first did the math on what it took to make one.

But me, well, I "invented" some things too. I just had no idea how they would work.

For example, for a story I was working on in the early 1980s, I "invented" the autonomous car and the cell phone. I never wrote that story down because I never came up with a plot.

I "invented" rain-sensing windshield wipers. I thought they could use a camera to see if they view out the windshield was blurry. But that was just a few years before I bought a car with rain-sensing windshield wipers. And boy, did I invent a great thing. I love rain-sensing windshield wipers. I guess they work on the reflection of LEDs, or something like that.

For a college assignment, I "invented" a temporary shelter for astronauts on the moon. It's never been used.

But when I was a kid, I invented the internet. I thought "wouldn't it be cool if computers were linked together so you could access the information on them." This was around 1970. Arpanet was just one year old then. I was 10. 

In my novel Rock Killer, published in 2012 (but written long before that) I invented the Zoom call. The characters didn't call it a Zoom call, but that's essentially what it was. 

Have you had any ideas that came to fruition? Let me know in the comments below.

Movie Ratings

The other day I watched a movie (Paint Your Wagon) that was rated "GP." No, that's not a typo, it was rated GP. And that got me thinking about how movie ratings have changed over the years.

It used to be that movies weren't rated. All movies released in the US has to meet the Motion Picture Production Code (the "Hays Code") that was put into place in 1930. This lasted until 1968!

Jack Valenti became the president of the Motion Picture Association of American (MPAA) in 1966. He thought the Hays Code reeked of censorship and didn't serve modern movies. So the MPAA came up with its ratings system. It started out as:

G: General Audiences

M: Suggested for mature audiences - Parental discretion advised

R: Restricted – Persons under 16 not admitted, unless accompanied by parent or adult guardian. (That was later raised to 17)

X: Persons under 16 not admitted (that was later raised to 18).

The MPAA didn't copyright the "X" rating and the porn industry took it over. And what's better than one X but three, so "XXX" became synonymous with porn. And putting out an X-rated film was box office death.

I watched another movie (Hellfighters) recently that was made in 1968. It was rated "G" but had enough violence these days it would have been rated "PG" at least. But that was early in the rating system and likely they didn't want to rate it "M."

In 1970, "M" was change to GP (General Audiences/parental guidance suggested).

In 1972, GP was change to PG (Parental Guidance suggested)

This system lasted until 1984. Then came Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It was rated PG. But the violence was, to many audiences, shocking. So the MPAA came up with PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned – Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13). 

And in 1990, X was replaced with the completely unsexy NC-17 (No children under 17, which was later changed to no children 17 and under). NC-17 is still box office death. But at least it isn't synonymous with porn. 

(The only NC-17 film I've seen is Ang Lee's Lust, Caution)

When I was a kid (in the 70s), kids' movies were all rated G. Adult films were either PG or R. 

But now, I've noticed, kids' movies are all PG, adult movies are PG-13 or R. And you can have one (and only one) instance of the F-word in a PG-13 film. Two, and you have an R-rating. And R-rated films do not make as much money as PG-13 films.  About the only movies that are G rated are nature documentaries.

I don't make movie decisions based on rating. I enjoy all sorts of movies but I have noticed a large majority of movies are PG-13. 

Do you used movie ratings as a guide to what to watch, or what to let the kids watch? Let me know in the comments below.