jameswharris

Less Is More–The Intel NUC 5i5RYK

By James Wallace Harris, Sunday, June 7, 2015

I love technological marvels. I’ve been lusting after the new iMac, the one with the 5K 27” screen, but since I didn’t have that kind of money my new tech toy is the tiny Intel NUC 5i5RYK – a powerful desktop computer smaller than a book. Whenever I buy a new computer I have great expectations before my purchase, and all kinds of imaginative ideas how I would redesign the computer afterwards. Because I’m reading Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, I was inspired to get the NUC to significantly reduce computer clutter.

The evolution of computers in my lifetime has been towards smallness. How little can a fully functioning desktop computer get, and still offer all the usability and configurability that a traditional desktop offered? Many users have already given up on desktops, switching to laptops, tablets and smartphones, but those mobile devices have limitations that force their users to buy extra gadgets to return them to desktop functionality – like keyboards for tablets. Or they invent kludgy apps, like programs that use the camera to scan images. People write novels and edit movies on laptops, but it’s doubtful we’ll see that kind of work done on a smartphone or tablet. And even heavy-duty laptop users often add an external monitor, mouse and printer.

This experience has made me wonder what the perfect desktop computer setup would be for me. Contemplating tidying up my life reveals the essence of my tech needs.

Fast computer (I hate waiting)
27” monitor with highest resolution possible (I love to see the digital world as sharply as possible)
scanner (paper input)
printer (paper output)
speakers (digital music output)
keyboard mouse (for me the best interface for communicating with computers)

I figure the Apple 5K iMac with its 27” screen is about ideal for reducing the size of a computer and leaving it big enough for productive work. However, it costs a fair penny. Since I’m a do-it-yourselfer and cheap, I bought an Intel NUC 5i5RYK. The NUC (Next Unit of Computing) is tiny. My NUC was $384, plus $98 for 16GB of memory, and $117 for a Samsung 250GB M2 SSD, and $20 for an Amazon Basics wireless keyboard and mouse.

The machine the NUC is replacing is a desktop I built myself with an Intel i5 2500K CPU, 8GB of memory, a 2TB drive, housed in a spacious Antec ATX case with 600w power supply. The NUC seems about 1/30th to 1/40th the size, yet has roughly the same capabilities. Intel even claims the NUC can drive a 4K monitor – something I want to buy in my future. I threw Windows 10 Technical Preview on it and installed all my favorite software. My desk is closer to the Zen simplicity of my fantasy, and my home office is silent enough for meditation. Since I ran my old desktop 24×7, I didn’t know how much ambient noise it made.

Both machines are fast enough for me. The old chip, a 4-core i5, ran at 3.3 Ghz, and the new 2-core i5 runs at a much slower clock speed, but is a 5th generation Broadwell chip that is much more efficient. I assume my old machine has a lot more muscle for processor intensive work, but I don’t do those kinds of jobs, nor do I play games. I’ve also learned moving to a SSD drive is blazing fast compared to the mechanical drive. I don’t ever want to go back. The boot up time is so fast I don’t mind shutting the NUC down when I’m not using it. Not only is this computer small, but it only uses 6-30 watts of electricity, as oppose to 80-200 watts of the old machine.

My fantasy before buying the NUC was to have a very clean desk. I pictured this simple box sitting on the desk, out of sight, or even attached to the back of my 27” monitor. The NUC does come with a plate to do that. However, I didn’t foresee how many wires I’d have to plug into the thing, which has turned it into a desktop octopus. It has two USB ports on the front and back, including one powered port in the front.

It terms of clutter configurability, I wished all it’s ports were on one side. What I need is two USB hubs. One to snake around to the front of the monitor for easy access for removable devices, and second hub for permanent connects I can hide in the back.

I currently have a 27” 1080p monitor without USB ports. I plan to buy a 27” 4K monitor with 4 USB 3.0 ports when the price is right. That should solve most of those wiring problems. You can never have too many USB ports, but how many are too little? I never had enough USB ports on my iMac at work before I retired, or my big desktop at home. I’m always swapping out cables. Engineers can design smaller computers, but we still have all the peripherals to deal with. I have these USB devices (but don’t always use them):

Printer/scanner/copier all-in-one.
Web cam
Microphone
Wireless nub for keyboard and mouse
UPS backup
External drives
Apple iPhone/touch/Nano/iPad and other MP3 devices
Kindles and a Nexus 7
Cameras
Memory card readers
LP turntable
External Soundblaster

All-in-one computers elegantly solve the problem of reducing clutter, but if something goes wrong, they are hard to fix. Modular systems are ungainly, but it’s easy to swap out components. The goal is to get rid of wires and cables. A wireless keyboard and mouse are about perfect in their minimal footprint. All-in-one printer/copier/scanner machines are approaching an ideal minimal design. My Epson WF-3540 has SD card readers and a USB port, and it’s wireless. Sadly, the wireless only works with printing, but I can print from my iPad and iPhone. I wished the scanner would work through the Wi-Fi so I could store the Epson out of sight. I hate seeing it on my desk.

My speakers are now the ugliest thing on my desktop. Each speaker is about seven times the size of the Intel NUC, plus an ugly subwoofer under the desk, and they have a lot of tangled wiring. No all-in-one computer has great sound, but I might find high-fidelity nirvana with a sound bar, or a SONOS system. There’s no reason why the music playing from my computer must come from near my computer. On the other hand, Mackie Studio Monitor Speakers might be the way to go.

Finally, I have my ugly UPS surge protector. Since the new setup is so low powered, I will be able to get a much smaller UPS in the future. Most people don’t use a UPS backup, and I wonder if I could live without one too.

I haven’t decided if I’ll put iTunes on this system, or even use Windows Media Player. I only use iTunes to put Audible.com files on old Nano players. I only used Windows Media Player to rip CDs. I’m very close to giving up CDs and MP3s because of Spotify, and I get all my audio books through my iPhone now.

Most of my data and photo files are in the cloud. I think going from the 2TB HD to a 250GB SSD is possible.

I’m already well satisfied with the NUC. I gave one of my desktops away, and packed the other in the back of a closet. My on-the-go computer is a Toshiba Chromebook 2 with a 1080p IPS screen. It’s also tiny. Once I let go of my old desktop, I’ll be done with CD/DVD/BD drives and mechanical disk drives. Next, I wonder if I can ever give up printing and scanning?

JWH

If God Created Everything, Who Created God?

By James Wallace Harris, Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Do we still ask the same philosophical questions at 60 that we did at 6?

Many youngsters will ask their mom who created the world, and when they are told God, the smart alack kids will ask, “Who created God?” Because of this who created the creator problem I always wondered as a kid why wasn’t there nothing. I kept trying to imagine a void without time or space ever starting anything. This caused a lot of philosophical agony in my little kid self. To put my mind to rest, I concluded that nothing can’t exist, and reality is everything that can be, because if nothing could have existed, nothing would have existed. That was my best solution to that philosophical conundrum.

Science had another solution – The Big Bang – which on the surface seemed a clever explanation to the origin of everything, but we still have to ask where that original singularity came from. Now that we’re exploring the idea of a multiverse, we’re back to how was the multiverse created. Philosophically, we’re no better off than it’s turtles all the way down.

As I got older, I encountered another impossible question – “How can bad things happen to good people?” I eventually solved that one by accepting the theory of evolution. Evolution is indifferent to our suffering. We can’t take it personally. Bad things happen by chance.

There are a lot of impossible questions out there that torment little kids. With countless religions how can one be right and the rest wrong? If God is all powerful why can’t he make his message obvious? If God is all powerful why does Satan exist? One of my solutions to that last one is Satan doesn’t exist, but is the illusion created by false ideas about God. Of course, that creates another impossible question – if all gods are Satan but one, which is the real God. And if God is all power why are there so many illusions?

Is it any wonder that I became an atheist by the eighth grade? As a kid I wanted to know the answers to those impossible questions. One problem with atheism was I’d never know. I use to fantasized that dying would grant me answers. I imagined being told the answers to all my agonizing questions before being shown the door to oblivion.

Now that I’m older I feel like I’ve found all the answers, and I know the reality of reality. Of course I don’t, but like religious people, I’m just going to assume I have. It’s easier that way. In case your curious, here are my answers.

I use the word reality to describe the whole shebang. The universe has gotten too small to encompass everything. Reality has always existed, and will always exist. It’s infinite in all directions. Humans are infinitely small, but there’s an infinity of things smaller than us, and an infinity of bigger things. There’s no edge, either expanding larger, or shrinking smaller. Time had no beginning or no end. We exist on the Earth by accident of cosmological and biological evolution. Humans will exist on this planet until we go extinct or the Earth is destroyed. Reality will continue without us. As individuals we are conscious of being in reality, but that awareness expires when we die. Ideas about gods were invented by earlier humans to explain reality but now that we see more of reality those explanations no longer work. There is no intelligent designer. There is no creator. We don’t have ask who created God because there is no God. We don’t have to wonder about good and evil because there is no good or evil. We exist. There is no why.

Some people answer childhood questions by accepting religion. I don’t think I had the religious gene, so I answered them differently. But does it matter.

My bit of personal philosophy does explain why I’m so concerned with climate change. Humans exist on Earth by accident, and are aware of reality by accident, but if we want to continue to exist we need to preserve the Earth. The reality of reality is we will exist as long as we do, and then reality will continue without us. It’s not personal. It is personal to want to stay alive, and it is personal to want your species not to expire. And although reality is indifferent to our desires, it is also indifferent to us making something of ourselves. We can do whatever we want within the limits of reality.

A human can push life for about a century if they are lucky. Humanity could push existence for billions of years. It’s only a matter if we choose to do so, otherwise the odds of reality are against us. Nothing in reality has everlasting life except reality. As a being aware of reality, I dislike the idea of nonexistence but that’s part of reality. I wonder how many other beings in far flung reality are aware of its existence. It seems tragic that as a race of reality aware beings would let ourselves go extinct. If we do, that’s how reality works. If we don’t, that’s how reality works too.

I no longer suffer impossible philosophical questions. I enjoy existence and study reality. The only thing that makes me suffer is my declining health and my species insanity to each other and how we’re collectively committing species suicide. It’s a comfort to know it’s not personal. From Buddhism, I know my suffering is caused by attachment and desire. A modern Buddha would now say suffering is caused by trying to control reality.

But reality allows that too. We are aware of reality, and we can shape it to the extent of our powers, and the cost is suffering the effort and desire.

Now that I’m in my sixties, I’ve stopped asking such questions. Along the way I found some answers I can live with.

JWH

What Are The Most Useful Concepts You’ve Learned From Science Fiction?

By James Wallace Harris, Monday, June 1, 2015

Science fiction has always thrilled me with far out ideas, giving me a life-long sense of wonder. Science fiction constantly reminds me that reality is immense and my everyday life is just one limited view. For the most part, science fiction has been entertainment, yet, I often find myself solving problems in everyday life by applying a concept acquired from my reading.

I’ve been reading SF for over fifty years, and it has programmed my thinking just as much as any Bible thumper has been influenced by their good book. Science fiction has tinted my view of reality, even though I know most of its ideas are far from scientific. When I was young science fiction fueled my hopes for the future, but now that I’m old, I’m curious what useful knowledge I actually acquired from this genre I love so much. For example, when I look back on high school, I see that a six-weeks typing course helped me get more jobs than anything else I studied. Now, I wonder if I found anything in science fiction that has been equally useful.

My favorite science fiction growing up was Heinlein’s twelve juvenile novels he wrote for Charles Scribner’s Sons. Heinlein worked to teach his youthful readers to prepare for the future by studying math and science. Yet, when I look deeper, I got my best lessons about reality from two stories from Samuel R. Delany, the short novel Empire Star and the novella, “The Star Pit.”

Delany taught me three useful concepts in these two stories. I’ve expanded them with my own interpretation, as all readers do. But I credit Delany with presenting me with these three philosophical observations:

People think in three modes: simplex, complex and multiplex
No matter how original you feel you will always meet people who have already discovered everything you did
We all live within barriers we can’t escape, like fish in an aquarium, and we’ll always meet other people who can go beyond our barriers

In Empire Star, a boy, Comet Jo, from a backwater moon is thrust into a galaxy spanning adventure. Before he leaves home, he is warned that he has a simplex mind, and once he goes into space he will encounter complex and multiplex thinking. I was a young teen when I first read this story, so I was in a transition phase between what my parents taught me and learning to think for myself. This was the 1960s, and so it was a very complex time. We like to assume we’re all working from the same page, have equal thinking ability, and the standards by which we judge reality are the same standards by which other people see the same reality.

Simplex thinkers believe everyone should convert to their way of seeing things. Complex thinkers understand reality is very complicated, and there’s a certain amount of negotiating and compromise involved with coexisting in reality. Multiplex thinkers often let simplex and complex thinkers be themselves, and work around them. Take for instance religion. Fundamentalists are simplex, ecumenical believers are complex, and our Founding Fathers were multiplex.

Ever since reading Empire Star I always ask myself if the person I’m trying to communicate with is coming from a simplex, complex or multiplex thought process. It does no good to use complex or multiplex logic on a simplex thinker. And it’s all relative. If we ever encounter an alien civilization, no matter how much commonality we can find, our parochial humanness will make our initial approach to them simplex. We’ll have to progress through stages that involve complex and multiplex thinking.

When dealing with individuals or cultures, using this concept will help understand various social realities. People can be simplex, complex and multiplex simultaneously on different beliefs. Just watch the news. People who refuse to negotiate are coming from a simplex take on reality. Willingness to bend reflects an understanding of others. Multiplex thinkers will come up with King Solomon like solutions that can satisfy both simplex and complex thinkers.

Comet Jo begins his travels feeling everything he discovers is unique to him. He feels special. Then he meets Ni Ty Lee who has done everything Comet Jo has, and even has the ability to predict what he will experience. This shatters Comet Jo’s ego. I’ve always wondered if Delany was a child prodigy who wrote this after meeting older child prodigies.

Finally, in “The Star Pit” we meet Vyme, a man with a long tragic past who owns a starship garage out on the edge of the galaxy. In this story, humans have discovered that travel between the galaxies is impossible except for a very few people who have a special psychological makeup. They get labeled The Golden. Vyme takes in a street kid named Ratlit who hates he’s not Golden. Between the two characters we learn how each discover the limits of their aquarium, and how they learn to deal with the barriers in their life. I’ve written about his before – “The Limits of Limitations.”

The older I get, the more I realize that humanity is probably confined to living on Earth. And for the most part, we each evolve through the same stages as those who came before us, and like King Solomon observed, there’s nothing new under the sun. Finally, nearly all our conflicts are due to the failure of simplex, complex and multiplex thinkers not being able to communicate. I’ve often wondered if simplex and complex beings are two different species, and Homo Sapiens have already forked, and we’re already seeing signs of Humans 3.0.

Yet, I still have hope because of one concept I got from a science fiction movie written by Robert A. Heinlein.

When the astronauts in Destination Moon discover they don’t have enough fuel to return to Earth after making the first Moon landing, their solution is to throw out enough mass to make their rocket light enough to match their fuel. Throughout life I’ve had moments where I couldn’t take off, and I realized that I needed to jettison the extra weight. Now that I’ve gotten older, and my body isn’t as energetic as it was, I’m learning to get further in my social security years, I need to throw out the past, all that extra mass is holding me down.

If humanity is ever to take off it will have to jettison a lot of mass from its past. To reach the next stage, whether Humanity 2.0 or 3.0, we need to give up religion and most of philosophy. Their mass keeps us from launching. Even on an individual level, I realize I have my own mental baggage that weighs me down. Much of it comes from reading science fiction.

Learning that I have limited mental fuel offers all kinds of philosophical parallels to rocket travel and Newton’s famous laws. And it’s not just energy, but cognitive ability. We all love the idea we have unlimited potential, but we don’t. Science fiction taught me that too.

Stand on Zanzibar came out in 1968, and was about the world of 2010. I read it in 1968, and I’ve lived through 2010. We can never know the future, but some science fiction writers can make us seriously think about the possibilities. I remember being a kid reading this book and horrified at the terrorism that takes place in the story. I wasn’t savvy enough then to know that terrorism is common in all times, or that in 1970 there would be over 450 terrorist attacks in the U.S. Since 2000, there’s been less than 50 a year. What science fiction teaches us is to understand our fears, even when it’s wrong.

To value science fiction I also need to know its limitations.

Stand on Zanzibar and Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room! scared me into thinking the future would be an overpopulated nightmare. What’s funny, our world is suffering horribly from overpopulation, but not how science fiction imagined. Science fiction failed to see climate change and the Internet. It also failed to see we’d never leave low Earth Orbit for 43 years. Nor did it imagine The Hubble Telescope and renaissance in astronomy.

It’s strange to credit science fiction being a success for failing to predict, but that’s also a valuable lesson.

The real question we should ask: Does science fiction warn us away from following paths into bad futures? Did all those 1950s books about nuclear war keep us from blowing ourselves up? Or is it just another case of science fiction being bad at predicting the future? I’d like to think science fiction made us wiser in this case. I can’t help but believe Nineteen Eighty-Four is a great lesson in how not to govern. Yet, if you study how Republicans use rhetorical trickery to dispute science, you can’t help but wonder if Orwell’s story isn’t coming true. Dystopias are handbooks on how to avoid certain futures.

Using multiplex thinking science fiction can predict and fail to predict the future and still be a success. It’s much too simplex to assume a specific future will come to pass. It’s complex to think we should look at all the possibilities. It’s multiplex thinking to perceive how science fiction is both wrong and right at the same time.

— If you have the time, post a reply about how science fiction has been useful to you. —

JWH

Is Science Fiction Wrong About Space Travel?

By James Wallace Harris, Sunday, May 24, 2015

A good case could be made that science fiction inspired space travel. Few people contemplate space travel without exposure to science fiction. Science fiction is so embedded in our culture that it would be very rare to find a young child that doesn’t know about science fictional ideas. Traveling to other worlds is science fiction’s most successful concept, and believing humanity’s future involves exploring the final frontier is practically wired in our genes.

What if science fiction is wrong about space travel? What if manned space travel to the planets and other star systems is just impractical? What if the final frontier is just a big fantasy? After one big leap we’ve chosen not to go anywhere for over forty years. What does that say? The more we learn about how dangerous it is for humans living off Earth, and how long they’d have to travel to get anywhere, it seems more and more practical to stay home and send machines.

When I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s science fiction was all about space travel. Kids today embrace dystopian stories set on Earth. Has there already been a psychic shift by the young? Do the kids growing up today no longer see space travel in their future? Have young people decided that space travel is only appealing to geologists and robots?

I saw Interstellar for the second time last night, and although I really loved the film, it was all too obvious that it’s a fantasy on the same order as those offered by religion and children’s stories. This made me wonder if science fiction can envision humans living millions of years on Earth without going anywhere. I think it’s possible to send people into space, even to the stars, but will we?

Humans aren’t very farsighted, otherwise we wouldn’t be destroying the Earth. We’re big on fantasies, and small on reality. Is The Game of Thrones a better oracle about future humanity than Star Trek? Is science fiction wrong about space travel?

What if we don’t go to Heaven or Alpha Centauri? What if Earth is our final destination? The faithful give meaning to their lives by believing in Heaven, and many humanists found meaning in the final frontier. If we never leave Earth, can we find meaning staying home?

JWH

Should I Buy An iMac?

By James Wallace Harris, Saturday, May 23, 2015

I regularly use the following computer applications: Chrome, Outlook, Windows Live Writer, Word, Spotify, Photoshop, Xmind and Excel – pretty much in that order. The application I spend most of my writing time in is Windows Live Writer, a tool for writing blogs. Microsoft has not updated Live Writer since 2012, and it looks like it will be abandoned when Windows 10 rolls out.

I’ve been using a personal computer since 1979. My life since then has been one long history of learning new programs, getting attached to them, and then having them ripped away from me. This pisses me off. Windows Live Writer is considered by most reviewers as the best blog editor by far. I now need to decide if I want to cling to Windows 7, or upgrade to Windows 10. Windows 10 will be a free upgrade for its first year, that’s a huge enticement to switch.

The obvious solution is to start using the web based editor built into the WordPress. I’ve spent years using Live Writer, so that’s going to be a painful. I’ve been looking at reviews of other standalone applications for blog editing, and nothing comes close to the web application WordPress offers.

Is the lesson here to give up on local applications altogether and switch to web applications? I just bought a Chromebook and that’s also forcing me to work in the cloud. But if I do switch to all web apps, then it won’t matter what computing platform I use – Windows, Mac, Linux or Chrome. Does that also tell us something about the future? These changes could portend big changes down the road.

I decided to stick with Windows because of Windows Live Writer. For years I’ve thought about buying an iMac. That urge became a craving when that beautiful 27″ 5k iMac came out. But I’d always think, “What about Windows Live Writer?” Nothing is stopping me now.

Yet, I have to wonder, “Why buy a Mac?” If I do everything inside Chrome, why care about an OS? Won’t it be overkill? Does the OS x or Windows 10 even matter? If I buy an iMac, won’t it just become a very expensive Chromebook?

Will we stop buying computer programs like we’ve stopped by music CDs? I already subscribe to Office 365. I mainly do it for Word and Outlook, both of which are free if you use the web versions. The free version also includes Excel. Google Docs has me covered too, for those programs. And I’m sure I could find web applications for the other programs I use.

The two programs I’d miss the most are Live Writer and Outlook. I’m writing this post in the WordPress web app, and it’s not bad. I could adjust to it if I had to. Is this the future of personal computing? Are computers just going to become different sized screens with the operating system becoming invisible? I understand why Microsoft is pushing so hard to get market share with its phone and tablet. Since I have an iPhone and iPad, why shouldn’t my next computer be an iMac? Microsoft really should have kept supporting Windows Live Writer.

Hold on though. If the need for Windows and OS X is disappearing, why do we need iOS and Android? Is it possible to have a future where we buy phones, tablets and desktops without reference to the operating system? When we buy a television we don’t think about how it does its magic.

JWH