Just another dot on the screen
Part of the afternoon was spent working on the concept of video capture. There’s a whole world out there, free of any sort of conformity to standards, and the poor user who feels the need to save something digital to the local drive is in for a wild ride.
First of all, there are enough acronyms to make a bowl of alphabet soup, complete with that awful red broth that leaves splotches on the tablecloth. Then, the sound will drive you crazier, as you attempt to save a file that can be used again. Be ready to load far too many “helper” programs before the day is over.
My own capture session ended successfully, but the subject matter drives me a bit left of the center line; somewhere, an astronomer believes he has identified a distant planet. Now, I’m a fan of science fiction too. The idea of a world covered in bright purple vegetation under a double or triple sun is fodder for an afternoon in the hammock. To go from there to funding research into “far distant” (two synonyms don’t make something more believable) planets that could support life… I’m a skeptic.
Let’s check what we really know. Someone with better eyesight than me has seen a dot through the viewfinder of a large telescope. He’s photographed the dot, and then he’s sat in his hammock and made up a tale. Nothing more. We haven’t gone to check out the new property, and there are no rock samples down in the geology lockers. Nobody has actually verified the vegetation colour or talked to an elephant.
We’ve got somebody that saw a dot, among a lot of other dots. In my world, that’s a sign that the halfscreen image in your magazine is printed poorly. Not proof of a celestial body. Time to get back to work boys and stop “fabulating”.
