Walkabout Day 2 - Brisbane

I wake up early this morning, still drifting in and out of dreams, to find a little face very close, watching me very seriously. I awake with a start, my niece Charlize had found me and was silently watching.

I spend the morning talking with her... she is four. She was very excited to see my bike, and soon started asking where her motorbike is. Jo, her mother, said later that Charlie is now very taken with motorbikes, but she'll have to convince her mother before she'll be allowed a motorbike, hehe.

After a swim, I went into town and met up with Michael Check, who I worked with until recently. It was great to catch up with him and David Haneman, they're both always interesting to talk with. During the conversation with Michael I realised there are several machines that will change society dramatically.

1. A printer that can print anything, down to the atomic level..... including people. See http://www.reprap.org
2. A scanner that can read anything, ready for the printer... including people
3. A recycler that can break anything down into raw materials, to be fed to the printer
4. A designer that allows you to design or modify anything to be printed
5. A power plant to deliver power for all these machines, fusion being the most promising at the moment

Any one of these five will change the world, and none have any theoretical barriers to creation. Once all five are done, I wonder what human society would be like....

After lunch with Michael I meet up with Plethora, and we talk about games, role playing, and Avlis, a NWN persistent world. See http://www.avlis.org for more details. She had me laughing so hard I was crying, just by nudging a gnome towards the priestess he was trying to maintain an appropriate distance from, and haunting him with a combat dummy.

I meet up with Jo for dinner, we have steak sandwiches I cooked on the BBQ.

Tomorrow I go for a ride up Mount Glorious, I am very excited about it.