An enthusiastic presentation about indoor farming with sensors and data analytics. Part of the point is to make any place as good as any other place to grow food, and to figure out what conditions produce preferred results, so we don’t need to ship the food itself (the atoms), only the way of growing it (the bits).
(16 minutes)
Because virtual reality is so emotionally powerful, it can be used to influence our behaviour as well as our perceptions, our empathy and our confidence.
(19 mins)
Magic Leap is creating a platform for “mixed reality”: it places virtual objects into your view of the real world, and enables them to interact with the room that you’re actually in.
This is an interview with one of their designers about what they plan to use the technology for; how it can enhance our lives to “have software living with us”; and how this is a new and different medium from anything we’ve seen before.
If this isn’t vaporware (and there are some impressive people, and large amounts of money, involved), it will transport us into an interesting future.
(30 minutes)
A different angle on “write to market”.
Originally shared by Rachel Aaron
Writing Wednesday: Know Thy Customer – How to Write What You Love and Still Sell
Hello all! After an EPIC CONCLUSION, I am finally done with Heartstrikers book 3!! Of course I still have to edit and polish and actually write that one chapter that’s nothing but a line saying [INSERT AWESOME HERE], but still, I know it’s been a long, long…
In order for implanted biosensors (like glucose monitors) to work really well, we need to move beyond batteries and power them from the body itself.
It’s not hard for an SFF writer to link this up with current advances in integrating nerve signals with electronics and to imagine an internal sensor net that monitors your body and mind and ties you into wider information networks.
(10 mins)
A research-based approach to dealing with cravings by letting them go past rather than trying to “turn them off” – either by an act of will or by giving in to them. Basically, it’s about creating a space between the thought/feeling and the action, and being OK with pausing in that space.
This is very similar to the “welcoming practice” that I’ve used to deal with powerful feelings.
How do you warn potential future civilizations not to open your nuclear waste storage facility?
http://www.damninteresting.com/this-place-is-not-a-place-of-honor/
If I needed a cover right now, I would be all over this. Look into it.
Originally shared by S. A. Hunt
I’m still doing 50% off book cover arts for a few weeks. If you want to get in on it before the price goes back up, now’s the time.
Contact form and portfolio at:
http://www.sahuntbooks.com/art.html
#amwriting #art #books
I happen to believe that good writing and being happy in life are not mutually exclusive. (I have to believe this, because otherwise I would be doomed to be a bad writer, and that would make me unhappy.)
This post is wordy – you can skim – but it’s a useful pointer to what psychologists who study happiness have found about things you can do to improve your happiness. A surprisingly large proportion of our happiness is able to be changed by these techniques (I forget the exact figure, but it’s tens of percent), so even if you’re a naturally unhappy person, there are things you can do to improve your experience of life.
Originally shared by Tim Brownson
#happiness #happy
Ken Liu (incorrectly referred to by the OP below as “Lee”) is a prolific short story writer and, as of recently, also a novelist. He uses an apt metaphor to point out what those of us who write in both forms generally discover: they’re structurally different, and the skills involved in writing them are not all the same.
Originally shared by Kantuck Nadie Nata-Akon
Two interesting writing articles.
The one from Mr. Lee sums it up best for me. I posted this to an IM to a writing friend.
(10:06:16 AM) Kantuck: Mr Lee writes: “When I write short stories, I generally don’t outline at all. I can proceed by instinct and experimentation, feeling my way and sculpting the story piece by piece while the shape of the whole is held in my head.”
(10:06:47 AM) Kantuck: I’ve said before I can write a short story or micro fiction because I can see it all in my mind. But a novel? almost impossible.
(10:07:09 AM) Kantuck: although I /do tend to get a bit wordy, once a story starts going./ Case in point my last one 🙂
http://www.space.com/32384-writing-scifi-requires-a-sense-of-scale.html
and
from TV tropes:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale
I think I can scale this down to help get more of a scale. Imagine me, living in Kentucky USA and want to walk to Juno, Alaska. According to Google maps that’s 3,315 miles. At 15 miles a day, that’d take me around 8 months.
Now scale that up to just the size of the solar system and go to Pluto. 7.5 billion km; uh…jezz…12,962,962.96 years.
Looks like I’ll need a couple more hiking boots now.
http://www.space.com/32384-writing-scifi-requires-a-sense-of-scale.html