Projects: overview
At various times, I get into research projects; some simmer on for decades in various forms, and some break off and pick up speed because I happen to run into something that really fuels the fire, so to speak.
My library here is largely one that I use for reference. I have a huge amount of material that isn’t in book form, and I’m going through that all the time and hacking away at it to be able to organize and marshal the stuff. At present, the idea is to digitize everything, and use various management utilities to be able to find and figure out what’s what.
Here’s a *short* list of the topics I’m still digging for:
Some of the research is more concrete, such as
- Ubuntu Linux (and networking same, and building a server for data, images and media)
- PHP/MySQL development
- Development of websites with Adobe’s suite of software (I use version 3)
- hardware research on servers, wireless internet connections, laptops and so on.
Others are far less obvious:
- Geneological research for my and Susan’s families, including the use of computer/internet data systems, image collections, and writing up family historical items. Susan has been plowing ahead on this a great deal in recent months.
- Linguistics: overarching interest in languages. I need to freshen up my rusty German, and get back to work on Chinese. I may be able to interest Meredith in this again.
- Gardening: How to keep up my homestead, considering my limited energy levels, and in particular towards our home vegetable garden. I have a large collection of materials from my mom’s library, some of it dated.
- British History: most of this is around the Wars of the Roses period, and yes, I’m a big Yorkist / Ricardian. I (however) am painfully aware that my background on the period 1600-1800 is weak, and needs a lot of work. Particular research is around the idea of a early English voyage to the New World; I’ve done some research on the Bristol shipping of the late Plantagenet era, for instance, and presently have this out from the library to review material.
- Celestial mechanics and stellar formations - well, OK, modeling solar systems. Complete with habitable zone mechanics, et cetera in planetology. Not to mention the formation and mechanics of multiple star systems.
- French history, which I’m screaming aware as to how weak I am on the period 1200-1850.
- Space planes, starting with early stuff (Saenger, X-20/Dynasoar) and working my way up to lifting bodies and mini-shuttles like the OSP from the US and other nations.
- German, British, Japanese and other WW2 era X-planes.
- Alternative space launcher systems, in particular the Big Dumb boosters and Sea Dragon.
- Ethiopian religious forms and magic.
- Early trade in the Indian Ocean and across Central Asia. I mean pre-Islamic stuff, back into the BC era.
- The Indus Valley civilizations.
- The early Chinese civilizations - waaaaay early.
- Chinese history in general, but also curiosities on what sort of serious alternatives could have presented themselves to the rise/fall dynastic systems.
- Alternative other European discoveries of the New World, including a possible Italian expedition from Florence, a serious Norse colonization, and so on.
- Human migration patterns around the world; when did it happen, why did it happen? Why did the major racial differentiations develop over 70,000 years? What pressures created them?
- General planetology.
- The Oort Cloud and other things that pass at the far fringes of a solar system, including the migration of stars vis a vis each other. What stars passed close to ours and how long ago, and did those events cause some kind of reaction for our systems?
- American political history in general, with such specific topics as late 1800s populism and radicalism, Chinese exclusion policies, FDR’s health in 1944-45, and various modern alternate history scenarios.
- pre-Islamic civilizations in Ethiopia and Arabia
- The history and culture of the Mongols, including their language
- Rail alternative systems for mass transit and what we used to have…
- Alternatives in modern communication - why did we go with VCDs and not video discs? Why didn’t radio faxes stick with us? What could have been done better or differently?
- Shortwave radio
- Cartography and geography of all sorts.
- Alternative energy systems; how to build a better battery, how to make the present options work better (including truly ‘clean’ usage of coal)
- Religious systems; how to have a mysticism that allows for structure and ritual without radical systems for or against structure?
- wormholes, gates, and alternate exotic transportation devices to other places and alternative timelines, etc.
- Paleontology, of all times and levels - not just the ‘age of dinos’ periods. Serious interest as well in mass extinctions (Permian, etc) not connected to that period, and the geology/geography of same.
- Austria-Hungary re-imagined and analyzed.
- Pandemics and public health issues related to that.
- Enclaves and Exclaves and small states in history.
- The independent duchy of Burgundy.
- Dutch history
- Canadian history
- Australian history
- Brazilian history
- Russian history in general
- What makes us dream about specific topics? How do we actually get to sleep?
- The development of antibiotics
- Caves and karst geology.
- Disasters - impacts, wars, you name it. I still have a large collection of materials on nuclear war effects, etc.
- Astronomy in general. What are Wolf-Rayet stars and what effects do they have on the neighborhood? How do brown dwarf systems work? What is our stellar neighborhood like?
- Extinct birds, animals, etc.
- Marmots and groundhogs
- Ohio history (especially Dayton area)
- Political science in general; the maintenance of political systems and communications, and the hard tacks for the present.
The big one right now is in modeling the world’s climate and human development over the last 20 million years, with an emphasis on the late glacial period to about the time of the fall of the Roman empire. One main focus is the development of the BIG glacial lakes and alternate paleolakes - where there are now many deserts, they used to be the beds of lakes in wetter periods (Arabia, China, the Sahara, North and South America, Russia).
Of course, what surrounds these are my interest in alternative histories and the reasons WHY things are different from what they had been or could have been. Any suggestions for allied research?