Watching I, ROBOT movie right now!

I'm watching I, ROBOT, on the AMC channel right now.  Because it's I,  ROBOT.

Whenever this film airs on a cable channel, and I've got nothing planned,  I just gotta watch it. It's my favorite robot film and possibly my all-time favorite movie.  I'll never get tired of it.

A special note: this is the first time I am posting to Cybernetic Dreams directly from my phone. Every once in a while, I just might do that.

Anyway, just wanted to share.  B-)

I saw CHAPPiE, and I loved it!!

          I was able to take a few hours away from my home and see CHAPPiE.  (When I refer to the movie itself, I spell it in all caps except for the letter “i.”  When I am referring to the title character, I go ahead and spell it out “Chappie.”)

I am excited.  This will be the first review I’ve ever done in Cybernetic Dreams.  I was going to write one for RoboCop 2014, but I never got to it.  I didn’t even get the chance to announce that I saw Big Hero 6 on December 13^th last year.  Big Hero 6 just may be my next favorite robot movie right under I, Robot. Maybe when I see those two movies again I could have a review prepared for each.

But while CHAPPiE is still fresh in my mind, I want to write my reaction about it, at least.  Which may read like a review.

Okay, so it’s not a review.  But it’s my opinion.


           I hope to complete my “review” of CHAPPiE within the next two weeks.

RELY ON MOBILE DEVICES? NO $#!%, HECK YEAH!!

So life got very interesting for the last two months or so.  Along with starting to prepare for my writing career, specifically copywriting… I’ve gained a new member of the family. 

          Having a new puppy must be like having a kid; you can’t let them out of anyone’s sight for a moment or they’ll get into trouble. I can’t always be at my desktop computer because I have to be on my toes in case she needs to go out, or I need to stop her from ripping up a carpet or chewing on a shoe (yeah it happens).

          So what do I do now?

          I read and write with my mobile devices: my Android smartphone and an e-reader tablet.

          I used to look at people working or reading on their phones and think, “Hey, either they barely have time to do those things on a desktop or laptop, or they just can’t wait and they’ve gotta do it now on their mobile device.”  They read the news, check the weather or write a document or create a graph.  They may even play a video game of course (or more accurately called, mobile gaming).

          I now find myself at the point where I must use my phone and my tablet to get a lot of things done, sometimes to get ANYTHING done, because without them I can’t be in the same room with my young dog.  Granted other family members take turns watching over her—my sister otherwise watches the puppy too—so that we don’t wear ourselves out too much. The best time for me to use any device is when the puppy is sleeping. When there are a few calm minutes, that’s the best time to use my mobile devices too.

          I love typing on my Windows 7 desktop computer, as I am with writing this post, but now it’s a “sometimes” task and not an “everyday” task. These days I’m reading or writing on my tablet or my Android phone if I have to stand up and be ready at a moment’s notice.  And guess what?  I enjoy using the WPS Office app on both my phone and my tablet for typing up documents. And the cool thing is, I can share and edit the documents between either mobile device. 

Not too long of a time ago I thought, “No, I’m not going to use my tablet for professional development.  It’ is for recreation only.”

          Well, now it’s essential for productivity.  I use them for recreation half of the time and professional development the other half of the time.

          I’m spoiled now.  Both my Android smartphone and my tablet have keyboards with word prediction or auto-correct functions. Not just that but, also I can type with the “Swype” function.  My desktop?  Of course it doesn’t have any of that, and I find myself getting just a bit frustrated from the lack of convenience. 

          And that’s okay. Both desktop and mobile forms of computers have plusses and minuses to them. I may type slower on mobile devices but I type a heck of a lot faster on the desktop. I use my Android phone as an on-demand notepad now; Inkpad Notepad is my favorite note-taking app to use, but every once in a while I copy/paste some notes to WPS for a doc. version of it.  You know, to format some of the font, such as bold and italics.

          So, I still value using a desktop computer to get work done.  But now I also have two mobile devices that help me to continue getting work done.

          Do I have to rely on mobile devices?  No $#!%, heck yeah, but I love these things now!

         What are your thoughts on mobile devices and how they make your life easier? Have you owned one or more for a long time, or are you just getting started?

Where Have I Been? Announcement 02-20-2015

If you've been following along, I haven't updated this blog since September. I hope to end that dry spell now.  I have a new announcement.

I am leaving my medical coding and billing career.

It was a hard decision to make. I spent two years preparing for that career. It became a problem when I realized that if I were to continue and get a job in that field, my writing would suffer. It has been suffering long enough. For months I was depressed about it and wondered if I should stay in that path.   As I tried to prepare for a certification exam, the career was suffocating my writing and creativity outlets and I was losing sight of who I am and what I truly wanted.  I know now that medical coding and billing is not the right career for me.

Writing is.  I am good at typing/word-processing, and I love the computer. I love being expressive and creative.  My writing may not be at its best now, but I am willing to learn more and improve my writing skills so as to write for professional purposes. I can exercise my curiosity more often now and not feel like they are distractions.  I would like to write for a living.

So on that note, I am going to attempt to keep Cybernetic Dreams going.  I am sorry for those who thought I gave up on it.  I simply was letting life take control of me, when I needed to take control of my life.  It's time to move on and be happy.  Look forward to the future instead of dread it.

It's time I get started on that sister blog for Cybernetic Dreams that I mentioned in the recent past.

Happy belated new year, and welcome to more possibilities!

A Sister Blog is Coming!

I have wanted to start a Tumblr for a while now.  I’d like to share pictures or blog posts relating to robots on Cybernetic Dreams, but I didn’t know what and how, exactly.  It may be a bit more time-consuming, but I decided to start a Tumblr that also focuses on robots.  It will have reblogs and posts that pertain to what I already have discussed in this blog.

Once I have the new Tumblr ready, I will announce it and include a link to it in Cybernetic Dreams.  I think it would be nice to share my interest in robots, androids and cyborgs in ways other than writing.  The visual aspect of Tumblr will be fun, and it will supplement the topics of the blog  And also, I don’t have to worry too much about what pictures I am allowed to post on the Tumblr because they would be reblogs of posts/images, which is allowed there anyway.

I am hoping to get it started by the time autumn is over.

Do I Want to Write for a Magazine?

I am considering writing for Robot Magazine.  I am not a robot builder, or an engineer, although I considered taking up a mechanical engineering major when I was too late.  But I like writing about robot-related things, robot-related topics, including cybernetic body parts.  But I especially love A.I.-based robots and want to read more about them.

One television show, called Extant, features an android boy named Ethan and he is what his creators call a “Humanich.” The story is not about robots—or androids—but I love how robot ethics plays into some parts of the story.  There are robotic machines in this show too, and recently we met a sweeper robot that is badly damaged—a result of robot abuse—and Ethan the Humanich feels sorry for him and wants to take him home.

It would be interesting to observe the different between how John the creator/father treats his “son” Ethan and how he treats the sweeper robot.  Very different.

I have yet to read more of the Robot Ethics essay collection, but I’d like to write an essay of my own.  I also want to connect the essay and the articles to different robot stories I’ve encountered, either in reading or in television, and especially, in the real world.

I recently started watching an old Japanese anime on the Internet, called Brave Police J-Decker.  The animation is old but it is a show with a good story.  Deckard is a big man-made robot who transforms into a police car (yep… a transforming robot, but not the Hasbro Transformers), and after befriending a boy, his A.I. systems developed a consciousness and a personality.  He is able to laugh and smile and frown.

My life changed so much since I started this blog in June 2010.  Priorities have changed but, I still want to keep this blog going.  It is important that I keep my fascination with robots, androids and cyborgs a strong presence, in case someone out there would happen upon it and would like to join in a conversation about the related topics.

BotCon 2014, My First BotCon

I may have not said it so explicitly, but…I am a fan of Transformers.

When my sister and I found out there was going to be a BotCon in Pasedena this year, we decided we would go during the General Admission days Saturday and Sunday. 

We’ve been fans of Transformers for one year.  June 2013 we started watching Transformer’s Prime.  Then September we started watching Transformers Armada.  Starting in mid-April we’ve caught several good episodes of the classic 1984 Transformers cartoon on its second season.  We love all of these shows.  We haven’t finished watching the entirety of all three of them, but we will.  We now have seen all three Michael Bay Transformers movies and are at this moment giddily looking forward to Transformers: Age of Extinction—no matter what others will say.  It’s Transformers.  Why not.

I think it’s safe to say we aren’t noobs to the franchise anymore.

So we went to the Pasedena BotCon 2014 at the Pasedena Convention Center.  We didn’t know what to look for—we aren’t collectors of the Transformers toys—so upon entering the Exhibit Hall, we were quite lost on what to do.  It is very different from going to an anime convention.  The majority of items sold and displayed there is the Transformers toys, but there were other cool things too.  There were artists who displayed and sold their fan art.  There was a Transformers Art competition.  IDW Publishing was selling their Transformers comic books at their booth. The writers and artists of The Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye and The Transformers: Robots In Disguise attended the Exhibit hall and sat at tables for fans to meet them and possibly buy their artwork.  James Roberts (writer of The Transformers: MTMTE) and John Barber (writer of The Transformers: RID) were there.  A video game demo was set up for Transformers Universe (the designs of the characters are reminiscent of Transformers Prime).

The panels were held at the Conference Rooms at another building within the Pasedena Convention Center.  Sis and I went to several of the panels in the course of the two General Admission days at BotCon.  It didn’t leave a whole lot of time to absorb everything that was in the Exhibit Hall.  We needed to eat and use the restroom too; if we wanted to enjoy ourselves, we needed to take care of ourselves too, and at least drink water and eat a snack if not a lunch. 

My personal favorite panel at BotCon was “James Roberts: Storyteller.”  I absolutely love the TF:MTMTE comic books; it was such a treat to hear him tell his fans about what was behind the scenes in creating the story for the comic book. There was a nice long Q and A session. Unfortunately I came up with a question to ask soon after the panel was finished.  And we didn’t get to meet him in person.  But it was so awesome just to be in the same room as James Roberts and hear him talk about his work.


We took pictures of some cosplayers (Sis took most of those—I took a couple myself), got to chat a bit with a couple of comic book artists, and we were even lucky get our copy of the Transformers: Dark Cybertron comic book volumes 1 and 2, before they ran out. This way we get more of TF: MTMTE and are introduced to TF: RID.  Maybe we might get into that and start reading TF:RID from the beginning sometime later.  Sis and I just finished Volume 5 of The Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye and…well, we want to continue reading it.  At the risk of meaning we’d lose our favorite characters further in the story.  The stories in this comic book can be so heartbreaking sometimes.  I have a few favorite characters I don’t want to see killed off, as well as plenty of characters that are not necessarily my favorite but are cool to appear every once in a while.

FAVORITES:

*Rung

*Drift

*Skids

*Fortress Maximus

*Tailgate

*And maybe Rodimus.

I’d regret if I didn’t go to this year’s BotCon.  We owed it to ourselves as newish Transformers fans to be introduced into the world that is—well, for us, just nice toys to look at, but also the beautiful artwork and storytelling that goes into the franchise as a whole.

Transhumanism Might As Well Be In The Dictionary!!

I recently learned a new word while searching for more good books about the future of humans and robots.   The word is, "transhuman."

Y’know, like transvestite?  Transexual?  Transpose?

Transhuman.

I am talking about humans turning parts of themselves into machines.  It’s probably going to be a reality by the time I die of old age.  Or I could be wrong.  But at my age I can live just long enough to take advantage of robotic medicine (is that accurate to say?  Cybernetic implants/augmentation would be considered robotic medicine, right?  Is there a medical billing code for that?  Sorry, my new career path just sort of made me enjoy asking that question out of the blue.)

Someday there will be such medical procedures as cybernetic augmentation (aside from what the military may be experimenting with behind our backs).  Right now, these are what are known as prosthetics, and they are not augmentation—they are replacements for limbs that are lost or organs that need replacement as well.

I am a bit scared of the idea, even though to me it is an exciting, fascinating and rarely discussed topic.  To be honest I don’t enjoy thinking about my future too much, not when it comes to health.  I’m not so old, but I am not that young either.  Of course I’m going to feel like taking better care of my health.

But suppose the conversation of robotic replacements for lost limbs or sick organs did turn to cybernetic augmentation.  Currently robotic prosthetics although expensive, are replacements for lost parts.  But in the future, robotic parts may become an option along the lines of breast implants.  People will want stronger (and lead to faster) legs, or sharper eyes, or super hearing.

So…transhumanism.  Or trans-humanism, I don’t know what would be the correct spelling of these for now.  They both seem acceptable…

There are many films that tackle topics like this.  Transcendence and The Prototype are two of them being released this year.  I am especially interested in The Prototype (it’s more of an action/thriller story), but Transcendence I might wait to see later.  They are both good ways to start, or continue, the conversation about what happens to the person when the body is deteriorating but their mind is fully active.  Something else also: how this transfiguration will affect the people they know, and perhaps the people on Earth.

Of course, this is not the end of the conversation...

I want to come back to it again.