Microsoft Sucks. Definitely. Definitely.

In an attempt to improve my Windows experience (actually, because a web page that was under construction was not coming up correctly in the old version of MSIE) I upgraded to MSIE version 8.

Kewl.

Then I rebooted.

And it kept rebooting.

*sigh*

Fine. Safe mode.

It kept rebooting. And rebooting. And rebooting. And rebooting...

Thank you, Microcrap.

Fortunately my wife had her reinstall disks. Now I'm in the process of reinstalling all my malware utilities, deleting AOHell, McCrappy Scam, and the rest of the garbage that OEMs like to fill up your HDD with.

Wish I could get rid of that trojan called Windows... *sigh*

Some day I will get it all fikst and start writing again. Fortunately I had done a recent backup to my 1 TB backup drive, so I lost nothing.

Quiet Break

I need a break from the Garum for just a moment. I keep stumbling over new things that make the storyline difficult--or I find holes in my thoughts--or stuff that I totally missed.

Time for a break. I'm going to sit down by this stream I took a picture of the other day. Nice and quiet. Pretty gurgling stream. Clean water. Water . . . hmm . . . tadpoles like water . . . tadpoles grow up . . . change . . . grow legs . . . become . . . FROGGIES???

AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!

Dain Bramaged

*sigh*

Deuce just pointed something out to me that I completely missed.

Since my froggies "talk" via skin color changes and aromas emitted into the water, the ones that were struck blind by the eclipse would not only be blind, but partially deaf. They would not be able to see the color change portion of the discussion.

Since this is an advanced society, there should be some sort of assistance for the handicapped to assist them in getting around this.

More pondering to do.

Bug Fixes

So we have a few problems with the story concept up to now. First and foremost, we have a problem with our day/night cycle. A while back, I’d decided that the exomoon was tidally locked to its mother planet. Therefore, with the exception of the occasional eclipse, it will always be daytime, or at the very darkest twilight (lit only by the light reflected by the mother planet), on the planet-side surface where our Garums live. So in that case, we will not have to worry about ice forming on the surface. Either starlight, or reflective light will be caressing the exomoon’s surface keeping the seas warm.

So our Garums exploring the lights above the water in the sky would have to be during a solar eclipse. That does bring up the point that most likely they (they being the original explorers who first braved the waters’ surface) would have not only looked at the stars, but would also have looked directly at the corona of the star during the eclipse. I’m not going to claim any über 1337ness for the Garums’ eyes, so they would go blind in the process. That brings us to a set of blind Garums (we’ll set it at thirteen total) claiming to have seen multiple dots of light in the sky, and then being struck blind and trying to make this claim from memory. A mythology would grow around the claim, as well as a general debunking of any lights other than the planet proper, and the star. I’ll tackle those concepts later.

Now, I have a big problem to take care of. An aquatic race beneath the seas will obviously not have access to fire. I thought at first it would just affect their propulsion system, but I was wrong. But on to the lack of fire...

Oh, sure—they might have the occasional lava flow under the sea, and a few mineral chimneys spewing forth. But they would not have fire. Ergo they would not have the ability to smelt ore. So we’re not going to have iron, steel, not even bronze. So how are we going to build our space ship? Will our illustrious froggies be stuck in the stone age, with the arts and philosophies their only advances to look forward to?

What if we had a mollusk that secreted a mucus that would harden to a steel-like substance that could be used to make plates? In addition to that, we have a mussel-like mollusk that creates a byssus that is also as hard as steel, that is woven in to the mucus so we come up with almost a Kevlar-ish plate. The mucus secreting mollusk has been selectively bred so it will deliver this mucus on demand, and is used in an industrial setting and the plates are welded together with the mucus. Mmm! Sea snot! Just what I want to travel to the stars in! Meh. But it is what they had to work with.

On to the next bug. Electricity. Oh, sure—they probably had an electric eel type of critter swimmin’ around down there with them. But with a lack of fire, we did not have copper to extrude for wiring. But then back in the day, one of the Garum noticed the electric eel rubbing up against this particular seaweed and zapping a fish that was way up at the top of the weed. They found out on further investigation that the weed conducted electricity. But how to keep the current from bleeding off into the surrounding salt water? Our mucus secreting mollusk comes to the rescue again. His snot does not conduct electricity, and will coat the weed-wire quite effectively. But we cannot build an electric motor, can we? Do we just lift with a farm of electric eels in the back of the ship, and when we need more juice, poke ‘em with a stick?

“Cap’n! She canna take an’a more o’dis! She done ate muh stick!”

Ahem. Sorry.

So we still have the electrical motor bug to fix. Will have to ponder more on this.

Now, a friend (who we’ll call Deuce) had a couple thoughts on my last entry. He was curious as to the Garums’ scientific advancements—particularly in the area of chemistry. Save the Cartel humor. Not that kind of chemistry. He wondered if perhaps they had learned that by mixing certain compounds under water would produce violent chemical reactions that would produce buoyant gas bubbles to assist in bringing a ship to the surface of the sea. I had thought of that as a way for the first stage of their space flight—perhaps even for their version of the Bell X-1 to break the surface as the first step in their exploration. Deuce went on to ponder the possibilities of this gas being used to break the ice cap and launch the ship through. Since we don’t have ice to worry about any more, that might be something that the Garums would use if they ever began to explore the dark side of the exomoon in earnest. He did suggest that the nosecone would have to be set up like an ice breaker. That would get us some heavy use of the byssus encased mucus on the nose cone. But I think it could be done.

So now I just have to think about how to fix my electrical motor problem…

Ice, the Final Frontier...

The science of our exomoon and its race's launching in to space aside for the moment, let's delve into some of the dialog of the Garums and start to flesh them out a bit. The following, of course, is just a rough translation. We obviously cannot translate all the nuances of their skin color changes and the scents that are wafting through the waters. This is just the dialog--we'll create/name/describe the characters to have the dialog some other time.

"We need to get up there somehow and explore! Our [Not totally translatable -- roughly, it is "Tribal Exploration of Things Above the Surface Agency"] needs to get us out there and find out what those lights are! It has been too long since we last broke the Surface."

"Have you not noticed? The Tribes no longer care about the Surface. We have other problems. There are too many mouths to feed, and not enough food. Homelessness is rising."

"That is my point! Perhaps there is food in those lights. But we'll never find out if we do not explore. Plus working for the [Rough translation -- "Agency"] will give resources to the homeless to be able to afford a home. "

"But the [Rough translation -- "Money"] to do this would be better utilized feeding the masses--and creating homes for the homeless, now, not later. The [literal translation is "Fry" -- most likely means children/young] need energy to grow."

"There is energy out there--those pinpoints of light. Light is an energy. When we first broke the surface, the whole Tribe stood holding its [Not totally translatable -- roughly it means, "Breath" but not quite breath since their gills gather oxygen from the water]. It was a triumph for the Tribe! What can we not continue that feeling?"

"The Tribe has lost interest. No one wants to spill resources into boredom."

"But success beyond the surface would generate interest and cancel boredom."

"Doubtful. No one cares about beyond the surface. They care about energy for the Fry."

"We can discover new energy sources through our experiments beyond the surface."

"That's just it -- it's all 'experiments.' We don't need or want any more experiments. We want solutions. No one cares about experiments."

"But the experiments provide results. We need to use our resources to gain more resources. Those resources are beyond the surface!"

"The answer is no. Tribal opinion is negative towards your goals."

Somewhere in here the "Lights Are A Myth" Garum would start trouble for further exploration, too.

Imagine someone who truly wants to go into space (Beyond the Surface) and gets slammed into the wall of public apathy--contempt for anyone who even thinks that the resources are worth spending on exploration. Perhaps even disgust. The resources are being wasted on those experiments and exploration.

So our Garums space explorers find that public (or Tribal) opinion is against them. Would they then turn to private enterprise? Using entrepreneurs to gain the "Surface" and beyond? Would the lure of resources for private ownership drag them up out of the seas and beyond to the stars?

Back to the science of discovering the stars . . . a friend of mine (who we shall refer to as "Thanatos" for reason obvious only to Lairites) made a comment on Facebook (after this inane blog reposted the previous entry there as a note) that as the ice expanded it might lift off the surface of the water. Thanatos conjectured that brave explorers might have then broken the surface tension and travelled on top of the water, discovering that the ice barrier extends both above and below the water's surface, yet having different properties on either side. He continued that the ice is most readily broken where the ice itself is brightest beneath. Thanatos also pointed out that breaking the ice barrier for the first time would have been equivalent to us finally breaking the speed of sound with the Bell X-1.

He also suggested that as a twist, the atmosphere might become lost or tainted when the ice was broken.

At that point I wrote asking what ramifications such a loss might be--and would it bother this aquatic race at all? They breath water through their gills, after all. And as for a loss of atmosphere, would it bring the surface down to near vacuum, thus rendering the surface unfit for exploration?

On that point, since they would be going into what to them would be vacuum anyway once they left the water, wouldn't they have some sort of suit and breathing apparatus to leave the water? Therefore, a lack of atmosphere at this point would have no real ramifications to them other than actually assisting in their exploration in a lack of the horrific winds that normally are found on the surface.

Garums?

We left our froggy friends under their ocean arguing about space travel--an then it hit me. If their ocean surface is frozen over at night, how was it possible for them to ever see the stars to get the inkling that they wanted to travel to them? Is our whole train of thought on lifting their massive breathable water supply moot? Have they never seen a star, and therefor never gotten the urge to explore them?

Since we have the sun, and the gas giant parent planet both illuminating our exomoon, night time comes rarely. When it does, we'd decided that the night is long enough for the seas to freeze over. But would it happen quickly enough for our froggies to not be able to spot stars?

What about a night being preceded by a total eclipse of the sun? The sun is still close enough to keep the seas unfrozen, but it was dark enough, long enough for froggy to poke his head up close enough to the surface to spot pinpoints of light in the sky. Would they have also looked at the eclipse and thusly gone blind? Most likely. So then they had to go on their memory about the lights, and explaining to their froggy friends about them--would the lights have become a myth?

Let's skip the math involved with the cycle of rotation around the parent planet, and around the star. We're not going to get in to the day/night cycle that much. We're more interested in how the froggies dealt with this story of lights in the sky other than the star, the mother planet, its other moon, and . . . what? What else would be seen in the sky through the water? Not much. We'd already decided that nothing else lived in the exomoon's surface due to the high winds. So perhaps water funnels and hurricanes?

Meh. They went up to harvest a certain krill like animal that lived close to the surface right when the eclipse happened. The group spotted the stars, and then wonder of wonders, the eclipse--alas, in looking at it, they all went blind. But since there was a fairly large group all agreeing on the stars being spotted before blindness set in, it could not be dismissed outright.

But some stated that the blindness was retribution of the gods for their audacity of seeing the lights in the sky. Perhaps the myth was that the lights were the gods, who struck the harvesters blind for looking upon them?

Livable Exomoons?

So let's toss this out for consideration...

In light of the movie, "Avatar," which is set on the life-bearing satellite, "Pandora," revolving around the gas giant, "Polyphemus" in the Alpha Centauri star system, we are given the usual scifi plot of the moon being habitable instead of the gas giant planet proper. (This was also done in the Star Wars movies with the moon, "Endor.")

If we were to create our own moon around our own giant planet, in our own star system (our own and a creation since we humans have yet to actually find a satellite orbiting a planet outside of our own solar system) what would need to be the parameters for life? (I may not have a continuing path of thought here--I may go off on a certain tangent that strikes my fancy and pick at it, forsaking the rest of the original thought. Bear with me here. I'm just idea bashing. Might use them, might not.)

It would have to have a mass close enough to Earth's own to retain an atmosphere primarily--unless we took the route of another form of life that did not need breathable gases to support its life--perhaps some type of photosynthesis that pulls nourishment directly from the rays of its star and capable of living in vacuum? But I'll leave that for another day--if ever.

So we're massive enough to retain a breathable atmosphere. Is it so massive that it is able to scavenge atmosphere from its gas giant planet? Is the mother planet giving off radiation? If so, the atmosphere would have to be thick enough to protect the life forms from the ambient radiation.

Next, do we have a rotation? Or is the exomoon tidally locked? One side always facing its planet? Imagine this, for a moment--a set up similar to our own moon. Depending on the circuit around the planet, and thus the star, one side would always be warm (warm only--not superheated. We want life here, not cinders) and the other always cold. Well, not always--but for a lengthy measure of time. The transit time of dark to light would vary depending on how long the lighted side was facing the star. Would we get substantial winds as the warm and cold air fought along the shadow-line? How substantial could they be and still have life develop? Would the life forms be low to the ground? Or just massive? How would the life develop to deal with the high winds? Or would the life forgo surface dwelling altogether, returning to the sea and gills?

Let's go the aquatic route. They never stayed on land due to the high winds. They remained aquatic. So we now have a set of aquatic denizens on our exomoon that have now become sapient and are in the process of discovering space flight. Of course they are after space flight. We don't want a puddle of tadpoles, swimming around. There's no story in that. (We'll skip the long trek out of the stone age into the industrial age for now.) How cold did the dark side get during the night. (Let's make the "days" and "nights" last 4 months for each portion, for a total 8 month long day/night cycle, just to pull a number.) Did the oceans freeze over during the night? We obviously would not have a fire-based launch system living underwater. Would they even be able to launch from beneath the surface? Since they did not stay on the land during their climb from stone age to technology, it would seem so. But that gives us a new set of problems. We now have to reach escape velocity through the water and through the air.

Let's have the oceans freeze at night. Not solid, but enough of a crust of ice that "Launch Window" takes on a whole new meaning. It's not whether or not we have the proper trajectory to reach our target, it's whether or not we can break through the ice.

What other problems will they face? We're not just launching our life form's mass. They will also have to bring up their "atmosphere" too. In this case, we're talking enough water to breathe. They live underwater, of course they are going to breathe it with gills.

One gallon of water on Earth weighs 8.35 pounds, making a five gallon jug weigh 41.75 pounds. Without going in to the difference in gravity from Earth to our exomoon, let's just think about the mass of all that water.

Quick experiment: get a one gallon jug of water and a five gallon jug of water. Put both of them on the floor. Balancing yourself on on foot, push the one gallon jug with the other foot. Now push the five gallon jug with the same foot. See the difference? Imagine now the amount of water needed to "breathe" for any extended space trip. Imagine now the amount of force needed to lift it off-planet (or off-moon as the case may be). Are we delving into the realm of diminishing returns here? Mass of life forms, plus mass of space ship, plus mass of ship's drive, plus mass of water, verses delta V to break out of the gravity well.

And once we're clear of the exomoon's gravity well, we have that of the gas giant it orbits to deal with. We'll also have that of the star--be it a single, or a binary (like that in "Avatar").

Are they so advanced in mathematics as to create a star drive that does not require fire? One that would lift all this mass? Through the water resistance?

Or am I poking sticks in the wrong mud puddle? Are they truly just happy sapient tadpoles, ignorant of the stars and space? Will they simply be happy swimming in their oceans, thinking artistic thoughts and occasionally poking their heads out of the water long enough to lick their eyelids and decide that this is not for them?

Tadpoles . . . juvenile lifeform that later crawl out of the mud and walk erect to tackle space and fire and the atmospheric wind? Naw, we already decided that they gave up on the wind. So we're back in the mud.

Let's give them a drive that can do what we need: lift the froggies, along with their breathable water, and their starship. Since we're just idea-storming at the moment, let's just call it the "Tadpole Drive." Somehow it mathematically waggles its forcefield tail behind the ship and swims it up through the water, and through the air--and is capable of doing the same in vacuum. Alas, it is slow, in star distances. So once they are clear of the water, they have to switch over to some type of star drive.

For the sake of argument, we going to decide that they have found that the light speed boundary is able to be broken. They discovered the mathematical calculations to show that it can be passed. (Hey, speed of sound used to be unbreakable, too!) No hyperspace here! Nosireebob! They have a good old fashioned zoom along drive!

They're first ship must have met with a horrific end. Not knowing about all the particles that are out there, they would have plowed into one and bam! Fireball! Imagine the energy released by two objects colliding at faster-than-light speed. One, a starship of . . . let's say the size (mass) of a 737--filled with water instead of air, of course. The other, a grain of sand. Imagine a particle collider . . . with our froggies as one of the particles. Boom.

So our humbled froggies go back to the drawing board and come up with some type of magnetic field (I'd hate to call it a force field, but along that idea) that will deflect particles and such from the path of the starship.

But wait--let's back up. How did they even discover about space and stars? They're aquatic, after all. At some point they would have to brave the winds to look unblinking into the night sky and wonder at those bright points of light. And with a gas giant as the mother planet their exomoon is orbiting, conditions would have to be just right for both the sun and the gas giant to actually allow a star watching night sky.

So the conditions were all perfect, and Froggy went a gazing and he did spot a star. Uh, huh. Being curious creatures, they decided that they wanted to travel to these pinpoints of light. But wait (there's more!) the traditionalists fight them. If Froggies were meant to star travel, the Great Egg On the Surface would have given them fire erupting from their hind end--not tails.

We would have a great conflict between the two factions. They would most likely be omnivores. So meat is on the menu. Why? Omnivores and carnivores are feistier than herbivores. We don't want herd beasts. We want individuals that will have that spark of fire that drives one being to overcome another.

So how would the fight go? Would it be mostly rhetoric with occasional bellowing matches? For that matter, how would they communicate? Color changes on their skin in a manner similar to that available to the octopus? Voice is right out the submarine's window...

We'll select color changes on the skin, supplemented by scent emitted into the water. So we have a stinky Technicolor battle of ideals going on under the sea. The seas are shallow enough for light to permeate, but deep enough for their cities. Perhaps along the lines of the crystal clear waters in the Caribbean? C'est bon. We'll leave them flashing and stinking for now, and pick it up another day . . . maybe. I don't like the smell of day-old fishy things.

On It Being 2010...

I completely blew off 2009, blogging-wise. Nu.

I still haven't gotten in to the whole blogging thing (as you can plainly see). I haven't the foggiest why I brought it up now anyway. I didn't even have a bookmark for it in my Firefox--I had to search for it.

Well, here I am. On my third straight day of not being at work due to low temperatures. Thanks, Mr. "Internet-Creating," "Global Warming, Fear Mongering," Roboto (also known as Al Gore. No really, watch him move. He is a robot in disguise!). The sub-freezing temperatures that are drastically digging in to my paycheck this week have to be your fault. I don't have any scientific data to back this up. But then, you didn't have any real data to back up your global warming nonsense, either.

So it's 2010. The local economy is slowly climbing up out of the hole that it fell in to when Hope & Change got sworn in. The rest of the country may have been in a tail spin prior to that, but our local oil-driven economy had been doing fine until that event.

I have zero faith in the US Bashing politico currently in the White House, or the wicked witch that heads up the House of Representatives (does that make him one of her flying monkeys? No, no--no need to lambaste me for being a racist. It's not a racist remark. It's a movie reference. Not everything has to be about the color of his skin. Get over yourself). He needs to spend more time fixing (or at lest trying to fix) our country, and less time showboating around the world, bowing to foreign leaders and telling them how sorry he is for what a rotten nation we've been. But this is just my opinion . . . .

Hey, Hope & Change: if you don't like it here, leave. I won't miss you in the least. I promise. As for She-Who-Pulls-Your-Leash . . . that woman is delusional. I mean, c'mon--health-care reform as her Christmas present to the country? (Would someone please point me to the returns department for that gift?)

No, I'm not going to go off on a rant about the whole state of our current government with footnotes and charts, and videos about what a group of incompetents they are. Suffice it to say they are over paid and out of touch with the nation. Let's lump those four sycophant news networks in with them, too. (NBC, ABC, CBS, & CNN in case you're out of touch with reality.) We'll close out this thought with the hope promised by the date January 20, 2012!

Now, about 2009 . . . the economy tanked. So what did I do? Started my own business. Tada! Been There Photography is born! Support the arts. By my stuff. It'll look good on your wall. Might even cover up the hole you punched when you figured out you were bamboozled in the last presidential election.

My boy finished his tour in Baghdad safely. Thank you, Father! I'm believing that will be his last deployment. Hmm, that brings us back to Hope & Change and broken promises. I hope he'll change this.

My daughter returned from L.A. to help me run what is now a family business. (Did I mention that I want you to buy my stuff?) The bad part about this is that I now have to remember to put on a robe when I get up in the middle of the night.

So what is ahead for 2010? Hopefully the temperatures will rise enough that I can actually go to work this coming Monday. Hopefully my own business will take off. (PLUG: Buy my stuff!) Hopefully the government will get their act together and do something that actually helps the nation, and not just themselves. (Hey, I do write Science Fiction, after all!)

On the subject of science fiction--has anyone told the SyFy channel that they created a name that sounds like a social disease? And while I'm at it, your made-for-TV movies r teh phail. I mean, Megafault? C'mon! That was a Megafail. And wrestling does NOT belong on the siffy channel--no matter how you spell it.

Do go see movie Avatar in 3d. Awesome movie if you treat it as a really cool story with spectacular CG effects, and not the latest in a series of Hollywood endeavors to promote the new Liberal Progressive's villain: the Capitalist.

Speaking of Capitalists, did I mention that I have my own business selling my fine art photography?

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