John K. Davis, Independent Distributor, SendOutCards

Being Busy

I have not been busy often in the past decade. Well, it looks like that has changed. Keeping up with Scopeware demonstrations, sales and installations added to the personal time I enjoy with Janet leaves little time for much else. This is a good thing. It feels good to be well spent.

My son, Jared, is coming for dinner sometime in early October (he is going on vacation from his 7-day-a-week, 12-hour-a-day job as captain of a sport fishing boat to come to San Diego for an intense 4-day sport fishing excursion into deep water far off shore--this kid loves to fish!). My other son, Matt, is coming for a 4-day visit mid-October. Jon Steven is still home (he is working at a local language school now), so we are getting to see a lot of our boys these days.

Daughter, Stephanie, is pregnant! We are planning to visit her, Clinton and grandson Jamison in Michigan during the week between Christmas and New Year's Day.

We are also going to stop in Chicago on our way to visit two good friends from my college days at Arizona State University, Bob and Mary Stolper. I haven't seen them in twenty years and I'm looking forward to the reunion.

Video Projector

Making Scopeware presentations is a blast! I especially enjoy showing Scopeware to people that understand how fricking amazing it is. It is fun to watch their eyes get bigger and bigger as Scopeware's capabilities emerge during a demonstration.

In order to make a more professional presentation and be able to show Scopeware to larger audiences, I acquired a video projector. I also wanted the device to do double-duty as a home theatre projection system. So, a new InFocus LP70 arrived recently. To see what it looks like, check out this page at my personal website:

http://www.johnkdavis.net/personal/fp/infocus.htm

Please let me know if you would like to see Scopeware, or have me exhibit it to your friends and neighbors. It is a good show. Thanks to Len , Mary , John , Josephine and Philip for having already arranged a demonstration for friends or associates.

Video Projector

Making Scopeware presentations is a blast! I especially enjoy showing Scopeware to people that understand how fricking amazing it is. It is fun to watch their eyes get bigger and bigger as Scopeware's capabilities emerge during a demonstration.

In order to make a more professional presentation and be able to show Scopeware to larger audiences, I acquired a video projector. I also wanted the device to do double-duty as a home theatre projection system. So, a new InFocus LP70 arrived recently. To see what it looks like, check out this page at my personal website:

http://www.johnkdavis.net/personal/fp/infocus.htm

Please let me know if you would like to see Scopeware, or have me exhibit it to your friends and neighbors. It is a good show. Thanks to Len , Mary , John , Josephine and Philip for having already arranged a demonstration for friends or associates.

Captain Kirk Explains

Do you ever think about what life would be like if Star Trek was a documentary instead of science fiction? This is a lot of fun:

KurzweilAI.net, Sept. 19, 2002

Star Trek: I'm Working on That: A Trek from Science Fiction to Science Fact by William Shatner and Chip Walter (Pocket Books, $25) tours leading research labs to see how close we are to the technology shown in Star Trek.

The book covers:

Getting Around -- everything from warp drive and teleportation to time travel and black holes. It features the work of scientists Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne (the world's leading expert on time travel) as well as NASA's work on advanced propulsion.

Smart Matter -- intelligent environments and the current explosion of new portable and wearable computers, not unlike those envisioned in Star Trek (such as communicators, tricorders, the VISOR, implants).

Aliens Among Us -- current efforts to create machines and robots as intelligent and mobile as we are, with interviews with leading thinkers like Ray Kurzweil and Hans Moravec.

Playing God -- Explorations of nanotechnology (with the field's founder Eric Drexler), virtual reality, cryonics, and genetic engineering.

Is 'Star Trek' in our future?, MSNBC (Sorry about the pop-up ad)

StarTrek.com

Life Imitates Star Trek, Wired, Aug. 2002

Nanotech Is Real

If you run across anyone who thinks nanotechnology is a far-off fiction, refer them to this press release from the University of Wisconsin:

http://www.news.wisc.edu/releases/view.html?id=7774

The university's researchers make every effort to minimize the immediate impact of their accomplishment, but do not be fooled. Progress is being made at a speed that continually surprises me, and I am not easily surprised, but new ideas, techniques, creative new approaches are happening every day.

I am convinced that full-scale nanotechnology will dominate our lives in twenty years, and I keep being astounded by progress that should not have yet occurred. The twenty-year timeline is looking more conservative every time I read the latest news delivered by one of my intelligent agents.

Scopeware Presentations

I'm finally busy doing Scopeware presentations. I have three presentations to make in the next two days and already a number scheduled for next week.

So far, the feedback has been great. Every presentation is moving toward a likely purchase and every presentation has led to at least one referral. If this continues Scopeware is going to be a big hit. It feels good to see that others are as impressed as I am with this awesome product.

It looks like I will have to purchase a video projector soon (a new toy!). The groups are getting larger and my little Lattitude needs a boost.

It is also suprising how much energy I find when I am having fun. This is a good thing. It looks like my life is about to be very busy.

Kurzweil On Innovation

Inc. Magazine published an interesting article about Ray Kurzweil recently. It goes into some detail about Ray's use of lucid dreaming as a creative process. A simple text version of the article stripped of advertising can be viewed at:

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20020901/24544-print.html

I often awake in the middle of the night with insights that pull me out of bed and into my office where I can develop the idea. It is 3:30 AM as I write this entry having been pulled from bed almost an hour ago to add a brilliant addition to my Scopeware presentation outline.

The mind is an amazing thing. And it is likely to become even more amazing in the coming years.

How Will You Use Yours?

The idea of an "invisibility cloak" has made the leap from science fiction books to an international patent application. Ray Alden of North Carolina is attempting to patent a "three dimensional cloaking process and apparatus" for concealing objects and people (WO 02/067196).

The idea hinges on carefully mimicking background lighting conditions to help render an object invisible, similar to how a chameleon blends in with its surroundings. The rear and front surfaces of an object are covered with a material containing an array of photodetectors and light emitters respectively.

The photodetectors on the rear surface are used to record the intensity and color of a source of illumination behind the object. The light emitters on the front surface then generate light beams that exactly mimic the same measured intensity, color and trajectory. The result is that an observer looking at the front of the object appears to see straight through it.

Source: Optics.org

How Will You Use Yours?

The idea of an "invisibility cloak" has made the leap from science fiction books to an international patent application. Ray Alden of North Carolina is attempting to patent a "three dimensional cloaking process and apparatus" for concealing objects and people (WO 02/067196).

The idea hinges on carefully mimicking background lighting conditions to help render an object invisible, similar to how a chameleon blends in with its surroundings. The rear and front surfaces of an object are covered with a material containing an array of photodetectors and light emitters respectively.

The photodetectors on the rear surface are used to record the intensity and color of a source of illumination behind the object. The light emitters on the front surface then generate light beams that exactly mimic the same measured intensity, color and trajectory. The result is that an observer looking at the front of the object appears to see straight through it.

Source: Optics.org