Birds on a Cable | Blog

I, Kris Relucio, am a survivor of Midwest snowstorms. Having lived 30+ years in Illinois, I’d like to think I’ve experienced a lot of inclement weather, including rapidly falling (and rising) temperatures. I’ve had my share of snow days. But I’m realizing that nothing is more dangerous than when one inch of snow hits Portland, Oregon.

It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for! I’ve been waiting ALL YEAR to write this up and people have been emailing me *NON STOP* about giving them their fix. Well wait no longer! Here are 10 exciting facts about beloved musical tour de force courier, Herbie Hancock.

1. Herbie Hancock was born on April 12^th, 1940 in our very own Chicago, Illinois! Riding those high winds to auditory greatness.

On January 8th, the annual Consumer Electronics Show kicked off in Las Vegas. For the uninitiated, CES is a gathering of tech giants and innovators looking to show off their latest breakthroughs, gadgets, and dreams for the future to the world. It’s basically Candyland for tech nerds worldwide. If you’re following the extravaganza you’ll probably hear the acronyms VR, AR, MR, and XR thrown around pretty liberally. Most people will be familiar with the first and maybe the second one. Virtual reality and augmented reality have become relatively common place buzzwords. Mixed reality and extended reality, although they have been around for decades, are less prevalent on a consumer level. So, what’s the difference? Why do we need all these different (insert cool word’s initial here)R’s? Those in the know say soon we won’t, however, there is a distinction.

Virtual reality, in its current and most common application, refers to a computer-generated environment in which a person can be immersed. It can be complete fiction or simply a live stream of a concert that you watch/listen to by wearing VR goggles or a headset. True VR will allow users to experience the environment with all 5 senses, however, most of the time right now we settle for sight and sound.

Augmented reality has become more common in recent years. If you have ever played Pokemon Go or created an animated Bitmoji of yourself, you have used AR. AR uses a device to create digital content and layer it between you and the real world. This sounds like it potentially can be classified as VR, but an important distinction is that AR does not replace the real-world environment, it adds to it. A famously terrible venture into the AR market was made by Google in 2010 with the release of the Google Glass. It is basically a voice activated smart phone that was attached to a pair of glasses that had a tiny display visible through one of the lenses. It bombed due to its price, limited functionality, software glitches, and the creepiness factor (since anyone wearing one may be recording you without your knowledge). Future iterations could include not just voice interaction, but hand gesture and even eye movement control as well as a full heads up display extending across both lenses.

Mixed reality, aka hybrid reality, is very similar to AR except for one major difference: the digital projections must in some way react or interact with the real-world environment in real time. Mixed reality environments have been proposed as virtual workplaces where team members separated geographically can collaborate and interact with physical objects like robotics in the real world.

Finally, there is XR which has nothing to do with Apple deciding to toss those letters onto the end of its latest and greatest “smart” phone model (Are you a sheep or a shark? Guess which one would buy an iPhone?).  XR, or extended reality, is becoming an umbrella term for any device that merges digital and physical realities. Whether it is just a marketing ploy to stop making us confused and afraid of all these different Rs, or the natural evolution of developing technology, you will be hearing this term more often.

People say all publicity is good publicity, right? Well, I think it’s safe to say that most of tech’s heavy hitters would disagree with that statement after 2018. There seemed to be controversy every single day; a dark cloud seemed to be parked above Silicon Valley (and other spots) that only grew bigger and bigger. I could write an entire book about all the CRAZY SH*T that happened but don’t worry; I’ll give you Cliff’s Notes version.

Does your phone take a long time to load movies or TV shows when you’re out and about, away from home? Without addressing the fact that you are attempting to watch videos on a 4-6 inch screen, I am pleased to announce that your “slow” internet problems will soon be a thing of the past!

I have about 30 flash drives in my backpack for various IT needs. Some contain tools to install software, some are entire bootable Linux environments or virus scanners, and some are just for copying files or backing up a user’s computer before doing something dangerous. They’re different makes, models, and sizes; and I’ve got them all on keyrings that jingle a bit when I pull them out. The largest drive that I carry around daily is 32GB. At home I have a 128GB drive which contains a backup of my computer from when I last reinstalled Windows. The largest offerings on Amazon are for 1 TB thumb drives from a reputable company for around $400, with 1/2 a TB at around $100-$130 (but wait a few months and prices will drop even more).

I’m going to preface this by saying I am far, far away from zero waste. I’m not sure that I will even get close. But I’ve continued to be more conscious about how to reduce waste in a way that works for me now, because as I am learning, it’s a practice, like many things.

You may already be applying these pro-tips on the regular (reusable water bottle, maybe!?) so I hope you’ll find these helpful. Below are some things I’ve been practicing in real life:

Let’s cut straight to it: Path of Exile is an isometric roleplaying game that gets me all hot and bothered. The game servers effectively get wiped once every three months, with players starting back at square one. This wipe is accompanied by a new league, which is a content patch that changes the core way that the game is played. It addresses imbalances to the gameplay experience that were drudged up during the previous content patch. While experiencing new content is what brings a lot of players back into the fold every few months, another chunk of players come back to exert their will on the newly-minted economy.

In 7^th Grade I completed an elective course in typing. Typewriting? Nah, I’m not that old. But the keyboard did look like this, complete with the no2 pencil placement:

Some of the other Birds mock how loudly I type – with authority, some (none) might say – and I wonder if it’s a product of being raised on a landscape of competitive typing. Keyboard buttons required elbow grease to properly place letters. I had to focus to win, to up my Word Per Minute game. No mistakes. No auto-correct. Shift to capitalize. Which hand is responsible for the letter, B?!

It’s that time of year again. The time of year when you are probably expected to buy a bunch of stuff for people. If you are in the majority, then you have already begun. In fact, 39% of shoppers begin in October. If you are like me, you have no idea what to get anyone and haven’t the slightest idea how it already got to be the end of November.