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Nov 2012Posted by Daniel Sharp / in Blog / No comments yet
I received some interesting feedback from reddit user deviantbono the other day about the amount of text on the first couple of pages. Essentially, he thought that there was a ton of text, making the pages too full and busy. This isn’t the first time I heard it (my wife said the same thing), but multiple people saying the same thing means I should really pay attention.
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Nov 2012Posted by Daniel Sharp / in Blog / No comments yet
Sorry I haven’t posted in a couple of days. Between Thanksgiving and Hurricane Sandy cleanup, it has been a very busy weekend for me. I’m guessing it has been busy for you too, because our readership was down over the weekend. Hopefully people had a good Thanksgiving holiday, maybe got some good shopping done too.
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Nov 2012Posted by Daniel Sharp / in Blog / No comments yet
Good news! I finished my anatomy block yesterday, and I think all my tests went very well. I haven’t seen my scores yet, but my professors were very nice in how they wrote the test. Many of the questions came directly from practice exams they provided us. I am very grateful for that, because (as you’d know if you read my previous posts) I didn’t get enough studying time in due to lots of babysitting.
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Nov 2012Posted by Daniel Sharp / in Blog / No comments yet
For the past couple of weeks (and for the next several weeks as well), members of my congregation have been going out to volunteer and help clean up the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy. Today my wife and I volunteered to babysit the kids of some of the other congregants so they could go out and clean up some people’s houses and such. So today, instead of studying for my Monday exam, I played with 7 kids for about 9 hours.
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Nov 2012Posted by Daniel Sharp / in Blog / No comments yet
I had two tests today in medical school, and have one more on Monday, wrapping up the Anatomy block. It has been very interesting material, but at the same time I am ready to move on to something else. Part of that may be that I don’t think the level of detail we are learning is necessary, at least not for my chosen career path.
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Nov 2012Posted by Daniel Sharp / in Blog / No comments yet
Hydroponic farms are nothing new. Wikipedia (source of all knowledge!) says research into soil-less farming began in the 17th century. Lots of sci-fi novels and shows (Acorna, The Sheep Look up, even Babylon 5) have been using hydroponic farming for decades as a means of providing both food and oxygen during space travel. It’s pretty sweet, but basically best for when there is no soil (like in space). If you have soil but the weather isn’t so good (nuclear winter maybe?) you’d probably want the most effective greenhouse possible in the last space possible. Some people in Singapore are trying to do just that.
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Nov 2012Posted by Daniel Sharp / in Blog / No comments yet
I read two articles recently that I thought were awesome, and that have direct application on the science of our story: functional invisibility cloaks and self-healing armor. I don’t want to steal too much thunder from the Science section posts that will cover how Minerva will use this tech, but allow me to explain briefly what this current advance in tech entails.
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Nov 2012Posted by Daniel Sharp / in Blog / No comments yet
So, I’ve had some interesting thoughts while reading some of the singularity websites my friend (shout out to Kyle!) recommended. Last blog post I said that I thought our story might be more of an Intelligence Explosion. Upon further reading, I think I’m still right, but that it will also have a good deal of Event Horizon theory in it too. How much can I share without ruining the story…
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Nov 2012Posted by Daniel Sharp / in Blog / No comments yet
My friend Kyle chatted me up today after reading some of my previous Singularity thoughts posts with some really good websites made by people who are seriously considering the real-life applications of the Singularity (instead of just writing silly blog posts about it). I haven’t read through everything on these websites yet, but there is a lot of really cool stuff.
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Nov 2012Posted by Daniel Sharp / in Blog / No comments yet
Happy Sunday internet! I saw an article today that made me smile and decide that Reddit is awesome.