Monday, August 10, 2015

The Casimir effect?

I've said it before, but it's worth repeating. The casimir effect is real, but it probably does NOT mean what most 'scientists' think it does (or want it to).

The Casimir effect, for those that don't know, is the effect that if two plates inside a vacuum are close enough together, they will attract each other with a force.

Now, to most this is proof of a quantum physics theory... and it may well be, but it could also be proof that what we call a vacuum is Nowhere Near as 'empty' as we think. It is.

If a vacuum consists of a soup of quad-trillions of loose 'strings' (to put it in terms Sheldon Cooper would get) you could easily expect a similar effect. In water, as soon as two plates get closer together than a molecule of water, the weight of the water outside the gap slam the plates closed. So, an alternate explanation is that the 'attraction' is the weight of the mass left inside the 'vacuum' and the gap is the 'size' of the particles too big to slip between atoms in the molecules of the plates.  

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Inventors most used tool.jpg

Some would say the most used tool in an inventor's toolbox is a lathe or a welder, but today mine is a box of band AIDS (I'm quitting for the week while I can still count to ten :)

Sunday, August 2, 2015

Amazon knows everything you do on Kindle

... and now, so do I!

OK, actually, as an author, I know much less.

In early July, Amazon decided to share with authors some of their super-secret info that they gather on all Kindle users, namely the ability to track in almost real-time what page of what book you are currently on... and you thought 'page synching' was all about making it easy to read a little on each device without losing your place :)

No no no no, it was all about Amazon collecting data.

Though, unlike amazon, I don't have names and addresses to go with the data I see, it is still telling and chilling all at the same time.

Amazon counts Kindle pages as if the book had been printed in 6x9 book form, so most of mine are 500 pages or so for those around 120,000 words. Not short stories, as most of you know.

What's fascinating to me is watching someone read a book... usually within the same day they pick it up. I don't think I've seen someone yet start reading... then give up. Though I'm sure it'll happen. I don't get many downloads in the black hole Amazon has banished me to, so it's incredibly easy to tease out individual readers.

And most shocking to me, as an author, is seeing someone every few days power-read the first six books (3/4 of a million words) in under 24 hours... then get started on #7.

What shocks me most is how rare it is for someone to take more than a day with each book in the series.

These are not short books!