Archives for May 2012

Interactive Entertainment and Detached Eddies

May 25, 2012 By Mark Leave a Comment

Stand beside a mountain stream and observe the water for a while and you’ll see that most of it moves in a continuous flow. Look a little closer, however, and you’ll see that the bed of the stream and objects in and along the stream — logs, boulders, the legs of a bear — all have an effect on the flow due to friction. Look closer still — say, at a rock near the edge of the stream — and you’ll find that the flow may slow to a halt if not actually move in the opposite direction, creating what is commonly called a whirlpool, but more accurately described as an eddy. Peer at the boundary between the flowing current and the eddy and you’ll see smaller eddies form and detach again and again, dissipating as they flow downstream because they are no longer powered by the object in the stream that created them.

Known as detached eddies in the science of fluid dynamics, these disconnected but still churning whorls can also be spawned in the atmosphere, as bodies of air move over the landscape or interact with each other. Heat water to the right temperature and move a low pressure area over that water and you may spawn a monstrous hurricane that lasts for days and travels thousands of miles. Move that same hurricane over dry land, however, detaching it from its power source, and it will slowly dissipate, even as it may still wipe entire communities off the face of the earth.

The key component of an eddy, and what distinguishes an eddy from a vortex, is that in the middle of an eddy there is a void — a place of calm that experiences none of the rotational effects of the moving fluid that defines the eddy itself. Drop a leaf in the center of an eddy caused by even the most ferocious mountain stream and it will float exactly where you dropped it. In a vortex there is no void, but vortices can also detach like eddies. This is known, sensibly enough, as vortex shedding — a phenomenon that has led to practical applications in the real world such as winglets on airplanes. [ Read more ]

The Healthy Writer

May 16, 2012 By Mark 3 Comments

Like many writers, I spend a lot of time sitting still. Maybe even more than most.

While I’ve always known activity is better than inactivity, like most writers I assumed I could balance the two in some fashion. Say, nine hours in front of the keyboard might be compensated for with thirty solid minutes of insane activity that left me gasping for breath and aching for days afterward. Lots of pain, lots of gain, so to speak.

I had this mathematical security blanket shattered early last year when it was reported that no amount of exercise could ever compensate for sitting still even for only a few hours a day:

The study followed 4,512 middle-aged Scottish men for a little more than four years on average. It found that those who said they spent two or more leisure hours a day sitting in front of a screen were at double the risk of a heart attack or other cardiac event compared with those who watched less. Those who spent four or more hours of recreational time in front of a screen were 50 percent more likely to die of any cause. It didn’t matter whether the men were physically active for several hours a week — exercise didn’t mitigate the risk associated with the high amount of sedentary screen time.

Like many writers who read that damning research I first denied that it applied to me because I’m not Scottish. In fact I’m mostly English, and as anyone who can read a map knows, England is all the way at the southern end of Scotland. In fact, England is so far away from Scotland it’s almost touching France. And you know how healthy the French are, despite rampant alcoholism and heavy smoking.

Given that I don’t drink or smoke and that I’m practically French, I told myself I had no reason to worry. Yet the report was so brutal and uncompromising, and I’ve spent so many years sitting absolutely perfectly still, in the back of my mind I thought I might die retroactively — say, back to 1994. [ Read more ]

E-book Reader Update

May 1, 2012 By Mark 2 Comments

I still don’t own an e-book reader. Until a few days ago I hadn’t been particularly intrigued by any of the current models, but PC Magazine’s review of a new version of the Nook Simple Touch caught my attention:

With E Ink screens, you need an external light source—that is, until now. The Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch With GlowLight ($139 direct) includes switchable edge lighting, like you’d find on an ultra-slim LED HDTV. You’ll pay more for the privilege—$40 more, to be precise, over the existing Nook Simple Touch ($99 direct, 4.5 stars), which remains in the B&N lineup.

I spent all the hours I ever intend to spend staring at an electronic screen that requires ambient lighting when I was playing games on my original Gameboy. The idea that I might be able to read an e-ink screen in a dimly lit environment like, say, my bedroom, has considerable appeal when compared to reading in, say, a bustling cafeteria. (Along with its review of the new Nook, PC Magazine released a roundup of all of the current readers. Although their five-circle rating system has always been badly skewed toward the high-end, it’s fairly reliable when comparing products across a particular segment.)

When B&N’s Nook first came out it was lambasted by the same tech snobs that turned Apple into a religion. While the Kindle is still the leading e-book reader, the fact that the Nook is holding its own — let alone introducing new features — is having an effect on both Barnes & Noble’s economic health and competition in the e-reader market. Specifically, Microsoft, always looking for an opportunity to cross swords with Apple, Google and Amazon, is now investing heavily in B&N:

The e-book market is still young; if Amazon continues to be seen as the enemy, there’s no reason in theory why the Nook shouldn’t become just as popular, if not more so. It’s true that you can’t read Kindle books on your Nook, or vice versa, but over the long term, we’re not going to be buying Kindles or Nooks to read books. Just as people stopped buying cameras because they’re now just part of their phones, eventually people will just read books on their mobile device, whether it’s running Windows or iOS or something else. And that puts Amazon at a disadvantage: the Windows/Nook and iOS/iBook teams will naturally have much tighter integration between bookstore and operating system than anything Amazon can offer.

Whether that bit of prognostication proves accurate or not, Microsoft’s involvement can only broaden the range of e-reader options and help keep prices competitive, and that’s good for everyone who isn’t manufacturing e-book tech. More here on Microsoft’s gambit from the Wall St. Journal.

Not too long ago there was serious speculation that Barnes & Noble might follow Borders and other big-box bookstores into the dust bin of history. I don’t know that anyone thought the introduction of the Nook would potentially lead to B&N’s salvation.

Update: The Nook Glowlight seems to be a hit.

Barnes & Noble plans to add near-field communication (NFC) technology to its Nook e-reader platform, chief executive William Lynch said Tuesday.

Lynch also revealed that the Barnes & Noble Simple Touch with Glowlight, B&N’s latest Nook, has sold out.

I’m not surprised. In e-book reader commercials everyone may be reading at the beach, but in real life the only people reading on a beach are wearing one of these and still going blind.

— Mark Barrett