Monthly Archives: March 2010

Time Travel Movies

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Part of the What Time? series, an exploration in science fiction.

Here in no particular order are some of my favorite time travel (or time related) movies. We will come back to a few of these as we explore time. Video trailers belong to their respective owners.

The Time Machine (1960)

Before Einstein’s famous paper, the H.G. Well’s story shows us that time is relative to the observer.

Back to the Future

Small changes in the past translate into serious alterations in the future.

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure

The fun part of this film is the solving of problems by remembering to travel back in time later to supply the aid.

The Butterfly Effect

The main character travels back to his younger self making small changes altering his present in unintended ways.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

“There is no fate,” the future and past are changeable.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Traveling into the future is easy, just go fast. Here, the crew finds a way to travel into the past.

12 Monkeys (1995)

Fate locks the past and future. Do the past or future exist?

What are your favorite time travel or time bending movies?

Get Off Your Butt: Standing Workstation

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Sad Stats

Background

A few months ago I sought out a new desk with adjustable legs so I could ensure proper keyboard height. The thought of standing while working crossed my mind, but table heights never reach high enough. I purchased a Gallant desk with extension from Ikea. Besides adjustable height, I liked the ability to connect parts to vary length including corners. The maximum height of the tabletop is 32 inches, too short for anyone standing taller than 66 inches.

My primary job places me at a desk working on a computer for 9 hours each weekday and sometimes a few hours on weekends. I also write stories and do artwork placing me at a desk in my free time which quickly loses appeal. My previous positions kept me moving about, so my current occupation is my first experience at office lifestyle. Even though I bicycle every day, I’ve noticed my health declining during the last 4 years. My cholesterol is up, my weight increased, and I’m tired more often. To compensate for a sore rear, cramped legs, and increasing tiredness I find myself walking around interrupting work. I sometimes kneel at my desk or march up and down the stairs trying to save my body from breaking down.

The article “Stand Up While You Read This” on New York Times points out that “your chair is your enemy.” At the bottom the opinion article sites studies that show that even daily jogging fails to offset the heart problems and obesity of sitting for too long. After my recent work experience, I agree. Bicycling everyday fails to offset the negative impact of sitting for 9 hours.

Standing workstation

Enter the Standing Workstation

Standing while working at the computer seems like the natural solution, at the very least saving a sore rear. Since my desk is not tall enough, I searched for solutions to increase height. One option is placing the desk on a pedestal. I found a cheaper solution: purchasing two matching monitor stands. I placed my monitor on one stand and my keyboard and mouse on the other creating a narrow tabletop 6 inches above the desktop.

Standing workstation desktop. Wallpaper photograph is Portland.

I remove the keyboard riser if I need an unbroken desktop space for other activities, or if I wish to sit. The desk height is easily adjustable, but not something I want to do for a short period. The risers I chose have adjustable legs so I can set the height for perfect typing while standing.

One advantage of standing for a few hours is that sitting is less painful, almost like relaxing. Typing while standing is no different than sitting. The key is proper keyboard height. Fingers should hang with palms off the surface while typing. My keyboard is at about my belt. I recommend switching between sitting and standing, and keep moving! After two weeks of using the standing desk at home, I find that I’m less distracted and more efficient. I get more work done!

I’ll post in update in a few months covering the longer term.

Conclusion: Get Off Your Ass!

My plan:

  • Take the stairs at the office each day (10 floors)
  • Continue bicycle commute to office (24 miles/day) and ride on weekends
  • Install a standing workstation at the office with a cozy stool
  • Switch between standing and sitting.

Modern jobs place many of us at a desk. American’s are in poor physical condition (not just obesity) driving up the cost of health care. Just look at the statistics. From 6% to 35% physically unfit youth in less than 30 years? We are a nation in poor health depending on older citizens to defend our country.

Do something about it. Get off your butt!

Twins Paradox

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Part of the What Time? series, an exploration in science fiction.

The Twins Paradox is less of a paradox and more of a time puzzle originally stated by Einstein.

Puzzling Twins

Alice and Angela are identical twins born seconds apart on a shiny afternoon. Growing up, they do everything together including dressing alike. Their mother insists they wear different colored bows in their hair, Alice in a red bow and Angela in pink. Teachers and some of their friends depend on the bows for identification, but their closest friends can tell them apart most of the time. Sometimes they like switching bows and pretending to be the other, especially when taking exams. Angela is the whiz at math.

At the age of seventeen years, Angela announces she intends on traveling to nearby Barnard’s Star as part of her astronomy studies. The university has limited room and cannot include another member on the field trip spanning several years. Although the ship can accelerate to near the speed of light, it must spend several years at the constant velocity before decelerating at the destination where the team will spend two years observing. Alice argues that it would tear them apart taking such a long trip. How could they live without each other? Alice tries and tries, but Angela has made up her mind. Alice waves goodbye to her sister and watches the craft depart the space station.

Thirty-nine years later, red bow long lost, Alice takes her two grown children to meet her sister at the space station. Angela steps off the spacecraft wearing the pink bow in her hair. Angela appears younger than Alice’s own children. Angela insists she has only been away for twelve years, not thirty-nine, and she argues with her much older twin.

What happened?

Short Answer

Angela’s trip experiences a time-dilation effect. From my “Quick, Dirty Relativity Review,” we know that time is relative to the observer verified using highly accurate clocks. One consequence is that observers moving at significantly different rates will appear to age differently. Both twins age normally and experience the normal passing of time. Since both twins move at significantly different rates, their frames of time relative to each other differ. Time is relative to the observer.

If motion is relative than why isn’t the time-dilation effect relative?

The Paradox

From Alice’s frame of reference, Angela is moving and her time appears slowed by time dilation. From Angela’s frame of reference, Alice is the one moving. (Recall that a reference frame tells us that science experiments gives the same results in uniform motion as if we were sitting still. This doesn’t apply to accelerating objects.) Why isn’t time-dilation effect relative? The answer is the accelerating part of the trip. Einstein brought up this twins puzzle pointing out it isn’t really a paradox. Acceleration isn’t relative.

Math

Assuming the space craft can accelerate without squishing the passengers to death, let’s try using numbers to see how this works. Angela spent three years at Barnard’s Star, the same in Alice’s reference since Barnard’s Star system and Earth are nearly relative to each other in motion. Travel time for Angela is nine years (four and half each way) while the trip from Alice’s reference is thirty-six years (thirty-nine minus three.) Disregarding time for acceleration, we can use the following formula to find out how fast Angela’s ship travels where td is time dilation and v/c is percentage speed of light:

The time dilation (td) from Angela to Alice is 9 / 36 or 0.25. This gives us a velocity of 0.9825% speed of light. Mighty fast! Getting up to that speed safely would actually take a long time without some kind of anti-squishing technology!

Story Serials and Series

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Three months ago, I found myself in a brief conversation with Ben White (@midnightstories) on his blog post, “19 years young and other tidbits.” On White’s post, we find this strong argument:

What is the impetus to serialize a story? After all, we don’t have the tangible, real-world constraints that necessitated the serialization of many early 20th-century stories in the first place. Do readers really digest serials bit by bit as they’re fed, or do they wait until the end to feast? My gut feeling is that the easy access to instant gratification in all forms of entertainment makes serialization (at least in terms of the storytelling itself) about as antiquated as watching live TV with commercials.

I argued that there is an audience for serials and series. Readers enjoy following continuing tales with familiar characters or familiar worlds.

We no longer need to wait for a specific time on a weekly schedule to watch our favorite TV episodes. Hulu and Netflix stream our favorite shows on our own schedules. Readers can instantly purchase an entire novel for their Kindle, Nook, or iPad and read at their own pace in comfort.

Why should writers expect readers to wait for periodic chapters “fed” to them?

Some claim the web will revitalize serials (and short stories, and poetry) either by reaching readers with short attention spans or new reading habits emerging thanks to the web as stated in “Sorry, English major, the engineers have triumphed.” As the article points out, not all experts agree. Even though reading has been in decline since the invention of radio, the decreasing percentage of readers read an increasing amount of the long form. Of course, the problem with predicting future habits and consumer desires is that there is always something looming on the horizon that nobody has given much thought yet, and it bites our predictions in the ass. Readers have long attention spans and find time to read. Another hurdle I’ve discussed before in “Short Fiction Decline” and “Short Fiction Needs a Platform,” the short story market is shrinking even with the web! Can short serials reach a new audience?

Serial Experiments

Stephen King’s “N.” appeared both as a mixed media serial and as a traditional short story. Both versions tell the same story, but differ in the narrative compensating for the visual aspect of the serial. Some readers enjoyed the multimedia serial while traditionalists enjoyed the short story.

Was “N” a success? Plenty of readers tuned in to the episodes, but even more read it in the book. This is Stephen King, after all.

JC Hutchins serialized his novel into podcasts to great success launching his career. However, many other novel podcasts have gone nowhere.

Fiction on Blogs

Reading for a long period is uncomfortable at a computer. Fiction is unpopular on blogs. Most blog readers would rather read how-to, news, or opinion. Visitors here would rather read my crazy ranting on poetry or picking on a clueless high ranking professor. While waiting in line, readers scan news and opinion on their phones. Fiction readers want to get comfortable, curl up, enjoy the experience from a traditional book or eReader. Web readers tend to scan for information.

Want to reach thousands of readers? Take stories off the web into eReaders, or turn them into something new. The web is where you build your platform and share the really cool stuff.

Experiment: Dunston Monster

Normally, I would never expect readers to read something I would not read myself. I have an occasion read serials, so I decided to give serialization a try as an experiment. You may read my results. In summary, it turned out as I expected: traffic gradually lowered until the final episode when traffic spiked, and even then none of the episodes reached as much traffic as my best posts. “The Only Color,” a tiny flash, beat Dunston Monster in number of comments and traffic. I will never write a traditional serial again.

Serial and Series Strategies

A week is too long between 5-minute flash fiction episodes. Daily makes more sense for traditional flash, story fresh in the reader’s mind enjoyed a bite at a time over lunch or after dinner. Note that “N.” episodes arrived three times a week. A weekly flash series works best based on theme or character without a continuing story. For a thematic series, check out Friday Fables by Barry J. Northern. What about traditional serials? We find ourselves back at White’s point. Why not release the story at once? Let the reader do what the reader loves: read.

The audience for the traditional serial is small, and it’s no easy task competing against complete short stories and novels snatched instantly on eReaders.

The Penny Dreadful aims to resurrect serials including flash, mixed media, and comics. A hosted blog links story episodes and providing various authors with a common place to build a platform. In order to grow beyond the confines of a small audience, it will need to grow as well and break barriers. Visit them at tpdonline.wordpress.com and show them your support.

My advice: think different.

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What others are saying

Serial Experiment Results

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I’m not a fan of serials, but I believe there is an audience. Delivery, execution, and marketing determine success. I decided to try a weekly series of flash stories. Instead of serializing a short story, I wrote a new story in serial fashion made of individual units containing overlap and reminders. Dunston Monster is the result. I set a limit of 8 parts so visitors could choose to wait and read at own pace (devious, I know.) My hypothesis: traffic declines as some stop reading or wait until end.

Not-So-Scientific Stats

Views declined over the period of 7 weeks of 8 episodes, and comment counts declined gradually to a base of regulars. Note that all comments are by #FridayFlash participants. Other readers are shy.

Views by Parts + Contents

The graph on the left shows a general decline, which counters the goal of a serial or series, until the final. Part 5 included a drawing that shows up in Facebook thumbnail, and I tweeted it in addition to the story. Note that I’ve added weekly views of the Contents Page which is the primary driver for the spike at 8 when ePub download was posted.

Comment numbers averaged 13 on each part with peaks at episode 3 and final. Comparing to other weekly flash series by other writers (6*,) I see similar comment patterns including the same regular visitors. Keep in mind that comment counts primarily represent #fridayflash participants with a variety of styles and backgrounds.

I’ve hidden the view counts as traffic counting is biased. The graph reflects averaging two systems.

Top Posts Comparison

None of the episodes beat my best stories in traffic seen in the graph on the right in chronological order.

  1. Darkness Was Her Dress
  2. Mother Dove
  3. Dunston Monster Part 2
  4. The Only Color

Traffic to normal blog posts generally beat flash stories, and one post beats all my stories every month: “How-To: Make a 3D Photo” due to Google searches. (Except February, view counts to “The Only Color” just barely beat it.)

Conclusion

This is a low traffic blog, but the assumption is that the results generally scale. As expected, many readers will wait until the end or stop reading a serial. My stories, tend to come with layers and include details that aren’t immediately recognizable making them less suitable for weekly flash. Daily flash serial might work better.

I wouldn’t expect a reader to read something of mine that I wouldn’t read myself, and I wouldn’t read Dunston Monster at a pace of one episode per week. For that, I apologize. I will not present a traditional weekly flash series again. My post, Series and Serials, discusses the general case and why I decided to try a serial.

What do you think of my Dunston Monster conclusion?

*6 other flash series