eftychia: Me in kilt and poofy shirt, facing away, playing acoustic guitar behind head (Default)
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posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 12:42pm on 2004-07-04

Not quite awake yet; 1/4 awake ten minutes ago, still 1/4 asleep; eyes incompletely open. Had been dreaming about email. Was owner or manager or something of a hotel that provided email service to guests -- sometimes scene changed and I was email admin for tech conf., but usually seemed to be hotel -- and we had email working into the past some of the time but not always. First it was random and curious and we wanted to harness it but didn't know how, then I woke up around 11:00 and mumbled something to [livejournal.com profile] anniemal and fell asleep again, after which we'd gotten a subset of into-the-past email to work but were having addressing problems. (How do we add times to email addresses, how do we do error-checking to make sure the destination address existed at that time, and more importantly, how specific does the sender have to be and how does the sender decide what time to specify.) And there were issues with certain combinations of content and times, or something -- I had these fancy graphs and diagrams like you'd find in science-for-general-public magazines but not the math, and I was bugging all my physics friends to help me with it, including figuring out whether we were sending actual electrons or photons back in time (and whether the particle or wave aspect was what the process hinged on) or just sending some sort of "information wave" (like in ... can't remember name of novel I read years ago set in Scotland with trickle of info back in time via computer) separate from any e/m wave. As I woke up, even while mumbling to [livejournal.com profile] anniemal about weather, brain kept screaming at me "must solve time travel problem! must solve!". Had problems with into-future email as well, but there's a workaround for that (store-and-forward); big question was error messages in the form of past bounces ... how to keep store-and-forward queue of bounces from growing too large if user tries to send mail to before either source or dest addr. existed. Wanted to solve into-future problem properly but just not as urgent as making into-past reliable and creating proper addressing standards. Still want to solve it. Wonder whether I'll get any farther if I close my eyes again. Anybody willing to advise on information-propogation wavefronts and time travel? Want to solve this.

Not sure whether waking up rest of way or re-crashing.

There are 11 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
 
posted by [identity profile] juuro.livejournal.com at 09:55am on 2004-07-04
Your dreams are highly neat.
 
posted by [identity profile] dglenn.livejournal.com at 02:58pm on 2004-07-04
Knowing your taste in brains, I'm flattered.
 
posted by [identity profile] blumindy.livejournal.com at 09:59am on 2004-07-04
I think so, too. Always a fascinating flow of events, able to be turned into a good and coherent story.
 
posted by [identity profile] dglenn.livejournal.com at 02:57pm on 2004-07-04
Thanks. Maybe I should try to write a story from this one, if I can do so without merely rehashing Hogan.

Maybe I can even work in a sneaky bit that came to me outside of any dream a couple of days ago, and have characters talking about somebody having made a Fustian Bargain ... where the reader eventually finds out it's not a typo, but that instead of trading her soul for knowledge and power the person just got a really good deal on fabric...
 
posted by [identity profile] blumindy.livejournal.com at 03:54pm on 2004-07-04
ROTFLMAO!
It sounds clever..... :-)
 
posted by [identity profile] madbodger.livejournal.com at 01:07pm on 2004-07-04
The novel in question may well be Thrice Upon A Time, by James P. Hogan.
ckd: small blue foam shark (Default)
posted by [personal profile] ckd at 01:47pm on 2004-07-04
Almost certainly so, given the mention of Scotland. Hmm, time to re-read that one I think.
 
posted by [identity profile] dglenn.livejournal.com at 02:59pm on 2004-07-04
I'm overdue for a re-read of that one as well. But almost all my books are still in boxes in the basement. *sigh*

And yeah, I was counting on the Scotland detail to be what helped someone identify it.
 
posted by [identity profile] dglenn.livejournal.com at 02:59pm on 2004-07-04
It is. Thanks.
 
I had one the other day where I was working out what should go in what corner (East/Air, South/Fire, West/Water, or North/Earth). The dream was all brainstorming and no fictional elements.

When I go to sleep I want to have dreams about flying and such, not spend the time at a blackboard!
 
Yeah, but is that better or worse than dreaming all night about Tetris, which I used to do?

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