Gentient
Sharing experience and what shaped it.
Topics
Site Playlist
While building this site, my music feed kept bringing me great songs. It was relentless. and I found it amazing.
I saved them into this playlist in the order they appeared. I found them meaningful. They are on Spotify as the “Gentient.me” playlist below. Feel free to emulate the list (Same song version in the same sequence) onto other platforms. I can post it here.
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4A0P0cNgFCZXMkNH3W3u0R?si=a4d42a8e84634506
If you want the full experience, play the music while you read this site.
Fast Sandbagging
Our community got hit by floods in 2017 and 2019. We got a LOT of practice making sandbags and we have documented what we think is the fastest way to make sandbags, but if you know faster, we are all ears.
Watch ten people generate a sandbag every 2 seconds, or 1,000 sandbags an hour. The entire process is laid out in this topic as a public service.
Weighting for Godot
How I manage my weight easily. Nothing to buy, just things to know.
"Waiting for Godot" is a classic play in which the characters are waiting for someone named Godot, but he never arrives. My experience with weight loss had a similar "never going to happen" feel to it. I tried and failed at dieting for 2 years, and then I went from 188 lbs to 160 in 6 weeks. It was easy. This topic tells you how. Ten years later I am 150 lbs, because I want to be. I have complete control of my weight. I think everyone really should have this knowledge, so I wrote up my experience and findings.
New Element Training
This is how I manage my muscle mass.
If I do nothing, I will be weak and frail. To be alive and vibrant as long as I can, I do this workout.
Everything IS Getting faster
Ray Kurzweil was an inventor at age 13 on the Ed Sullivan show, and he has been tracking various inventions over time. He has discovered that everything that uses information technology is advancing at an exponential rate. I find his arguments and data absolutely convincing. The implications of this are astounding. It is almost like he discovered a new "force" like gravity that acts around us all the time, but we didn't know is there.
If we were to fall into a black hole the force of gravity would continue to grow exponentially. Ray is saying that we are doing the equivalent of falling into an information technology "black hole" of increasing capability. Maybe falling is not the right way to look at it, but rising(?) upward to an IT "Black hole" of increasing capability. The progress we have made in the last 10 years will happen in 5 now; and then 2.5 and then 1.75, etc. Until the progress we have made in the last 20 years happens in an hour. This is going to become an unrecognizable reality very shortly. How will we adjust? I have no idea.
Chaos = Creativity
James Gleick's first book, "Chaos: Making a New Science", an international best-seller, chronicled the development of chaos theory and made the Butterfly Effect a widely used phrase. This topic explores what it meant to me.
Chaos is different from randomness and I had to see it for myself. I wrote a java program to simulate it. This topic includes some videos and images that show the difference and show how creativity can come from the heart of chaos. After reading this book, I felt I knew where the creativity in the universe comes from.
There is also the java code for my simulation to play with if you are interested.
Transforming Faces
A friend and neighbor volunteered on a project to develop a medical records system for a Cleft Palate clinic in Ethiopia. She dragged me in for the technical bits. I am so grateful to be able to make such a difference.
Morganics
I have been helping a friend develop his soil supplement business. He uncovered a way to use natures own mechanisms to build plant health by triggering the plant's immunity response to make it into a "super-plant".
The results are astounding. We have not seen any crop where the yield increase is less that 10%. It works on all plants, yes weeds too.
With this technology, we can increase the global food supply by 10%. Wow, this is major!
Little Roger Stories, and Other Bits I Find Interesting
These are the funny stories I told to my kids to let them know we all make mistakes. I thought I was so unique. Then I talked to Brad. Brad had even better stories. I think we all must have these stories!
I also used this topic to post little things I find funny, interesting or meaningful.