read:"CES 2017 Impressions"

CES celebrated 50 years last week.  Where there didn’t seem to be a clear buzz around any one product leading into the show, what became clearer, as buzz generated on day one, became increasingly intriguing.  To help build visuals, please visit my Twitter page for photos.

Cars definitely won a lot of the floor chatter and the queues to the driver seat.  Every big vendor (not only auto manufacturers) had a car at its booth to show how its ecosystem worked in tandem.  Linking Toyota’s Concept ‘I’ and not saying a word, because nothing will say it better than watching this in motion.  Impressive.  BMW showed off its HoloActive Touch system, and equally impressive interior for autonomous vehicles.  All manufacturers announced AI and autonomous cars.

     For media in cars, Ericsson pitched 5G-enable seamless experiences.  If you are listening to music or a podcast at home, your phone will sync with your car and pick-up where you left off.  Kids will have seamless experience as their profiles extend to their seats.  Ericsson also pitched the benefits of 5G for enterprise services and speed to market.

Amazon’s Alexa was next as another ‘best in show’.  Amazon has made their service ubiquitous across 17 different devices.  Ford announced adding Alexa to their fleet, for example.  At the Aria’s C Space of the convention, Amazon rented out an entire space pitching Amazon Marketing – they are leveraging the success of Alexa and Echo to create marketing opportunities for clients.

     Here’s a mouthful, but, “machine learning, highly connected, analytics” were the buzzwords from folks like Adstream, Video Amp and Ericsson.  They were all offering products to increase the knowledge of the consumer.  Ericsson was offering analytics-as-a-service, showing off its engagement with NASCAR.  Adstream offered seamless commercial delivery, oversight and analytics (apparently they already worked on Mick-E).  Videoamp offers optimization and analytics tools in a single interface.

Televisions and displays still naturally draw attention.  Sony finally embraced OLED technology with their Bravia.  But LG got most of the chatter, since they introduced the 2.57mm Signature 4K W (‘w’ for wallpaper).  Why it won several ‘best in show’ categories is it not only being only a few coins in width, but how they achieved this: by putting its ‘guts’ in the sound bar.  All this and the LG had visual improvement upon its predecessors to boot.

     Outside of what would be deemed ‘traditional’ sets, we are seeing bezels drift away, monitor walls seamlessly working in parity, and even transparent monitors.  When a screen is not in use, it goes clear (you guessed it, LG) – so no longer will your sets be an intrusive part of a space.  Razer’s project Ariana integrates a television with projector and ambient lights to immerse the room in you are in, where VR seems to be losing steam.

     Integrated services within the television or through stream boxes have become ubiquitous, so there were no surprises.  However, Sling TV’s AirTV, where over-the-air signals are integrated alongside your Sling service finally bridges OTA through one box.  (Side note, DVR usage has been in decline as more of these stream boxes disperse through the market.)  Disney licensed to a company called Snakebyte, putting together a $99 kid-friendly stream box that will provide video and games.  It’s based on Android and comes with an optional Bluetooth controller.

     For CES after hours - I put in some photos of the night 'life' - which was hard to come by.  Am I the only one that can stay up until 4 in the morning?  https://www.instagram.com/edwardianjackal/

     For the full edwardianjackal experience, please check out the website page.

...Vegas...Omnia...Marquee...

http://omnianightclub.com/

http://marqueelasvegas.com/

http://omnianightclub.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKzsTJUjAn4

http://marqueelasvegas.com/

http://marqueelasvegas.com/

...D...A Struggle...

"The struggle is imminent, no?"  The phlegm growl rattling in his exhalation, he sat in the corner of room 1639 opposite me.  Sat in the dark wood desk chair and I on the bed with my arm over my brow.  I stared at him through wisps of hair, trying to blot the little streams of afternoon sun spilling through the curtains.  He shouldn't smoke: I'll face a charge on checkout.

He had no eyes, or, I could not perceive them.  The light was a glowing smudge on the right side of his face, the details of his white hair, his light scars that crisscrossed his face were crisp.  They were tick marks of years of trouble.  Troubles that he impugned upon others in a trial of several decades.  He crossed his legs and laid his hand lightly on his knee.  A Southern genteel perhaps.  His voice had a singsong way about it.  That would be my prejudice.

"I've refined my art over many years, you see."  The use at the end, perhaps German?  The television was on, but the sound muted.  It was hard to stare at him.  This was all designed, this was dramatics.  The light in my face, the light on his, the light of the television.  He gave me something.  I felt like I had just run a marathon. Smells were harsh.  The smell of his cigarette mingled with the layers of smokes past.  The hotels on Fremont were of the old tradition.  There was smoke, unabashedly so.  He exhaled, the rattle almost soothing, it was long and rhythmic.  The cloud invader pushed toward me but dissipated.

I gagged.  He grinned.  I felt the weight in my body, a sickly heavy weight that grew with each breath.

"You see, you will die from arsenic.  A few cigarettes would not normally do this of course, the body can withstand a nominal amount of it.  In your case, I've provided an intravenous amount of lacetine.  Your body has grown grossly sensitive to arsenic.  It will be take only a few cigarettes to kill you."

I nodded.  What else could I do?  He was meaning to kill me.  That was that.

Days prior I had arrived at the D with a single duffel bag, twenty thousand dollars and a few slips of paper.  The slips of paper was worth much more than the cash.  I was to wait a day.  Assuredly, I was to wait so they would watch me.  Clovis Marshall would send a few men that I had never seen before.  I intentionally sequestered myself to the Fremont Experience.  The Experience was for those that had yet humiliated a grown man in women's lingerie.  Under the thousands of lights, rubes smiled uncomfortably at shift around the woefully desperate.  Scratch that off the bucket list.  I did not hide myself from them.  I knew I was obvious enough. Years of experience working with phantoms will do that.

I fed myself on a few shit restaurants.  I had to keep it light.  $2 hot dogs.  $2 shrimp cocktails.  I couldn't dig into the kitty.  20k in a bag is 20k, not a penny less.  There would be no problems from me.

I sat at the bar of the Four Queens, as I found them particularly helpful in providing drinks as I played .25 cent video poker.  I finally sensed a man taking an interest in me.  Those in my business have the instincts to detect another piece of shit, the soul sucking dregs that fed off of this life.

He flipped open a pack of matches and sucked on a stick.  He kept the matches out, the face to me.  The Golden Gate.  I imperceptibly nodded to him when he finally made eye contact.  Even then I could not see the color of his eye.  We would exchange bags then.

I went to the hotel, invigorated by the chance to leave this place.  I had nothing but business here right now.  I had an appointment with a guy from Madera to install some new rain gutters.  The current ones were like sieves.  It was all I could think about.

As I put away my dirty clothes in a launder bag, I miss old Vegas.  I do a few things when I come: hit up St Joan of Arc on South Casino (say a prayer for my parents), find a place with some Sinatra left in it (they are getting harder to come by) and I eat at Oscar's.  Spaghetti and steak.  Whiskey.  Water.  I've done this for the better part of seven years.  I listen to Sinatra 8-tracks the rest of the way home, a few bricks of heroin packed under the undercarriage of the Ford Fiesta.

There was a knock at the door and the white haired man stood there with a stone face, I only stared at his mouth.  It was flat, like an ocean's shore.  He moved into the room before I could even respond.  He locked the door behind us.  I kept my face to him, and we bantered for forty minutes when I turned my back.  It all made sense, but only after he hit me in the back of the skull with a sock full of dollar coin.  He hit me with one smooth stroke, a professional who did things right.

It all made sense and it all caught up with me.  Everything.

...a night at the Mint...(short abstract)...

Where were those matches?

The lights weren't on in the room.  They didn't need to be.  Even through the dark jute curtains the lights of the Fremont adjacent to the Mint, the California Club across the street, the pulsating lights of the Golden Nugget even further, shot straight along the walls, casting crooked shadows.  It was a hot night.

Beyond the lights the sky was open and infinite, as were the dark of the desert beyond the Strip.  The lights shone off of the dunes.  The town was getting quiet.  It was 3:18 am.  Despite the talk, every place gets quiet.  It must.  Lou has been enough places.  Even Vegas grows still before dawn.

It is still amazing.  He wondered at the lights.  Even though he was 27, he wondered.  He lit another cigarette and leaned with his arms along the handrail.  The glass elevator would occasionally pass, but, as far as he could see it was empty.  The thousands of lights felt like an audience.  Lou had no performance for them.

And the neon?  How much neon?  Argon, neon, 'noble gases' - it was yet another miracle of modern science.  Just six years ago, there across the desert, they tested another nuclear device.  And, in the middle of a desert, an unforgiving one at that, here is the most modern city on Earth.  Water, electricity, air conditioning, go go dancers...there is little wanting, but coolness.  A light breeze...anything.

He noted his cigarette burned quickly.  It was dry.  He had gone through four in under the half an hour he had been back to the room.

"The AC is broken, sorry," from the little concierge.  She was a dark thing, with dark red lipstick.  She was perspiring despite the little fan they had on the desk.  The smell of money was all around the casino.  The smell of coins.  The smell of bills.  Sweat, desperation and, once in a while, the sound of joy as coins fell into the metal tray.  Everyone got up from their chairs, no longer beholden to social more, and gawking as if it were an accident on the highway.

He flipped the Mint matchbook along his fingers.  The elevator came up again.  Where he expected it to be empty, there she is.  She was staring at him with a look that she had a long day.  She was tipsy; she was dying to sleep.  She smirked a half-smirk.  It was enough to make him hold his breath.  She let off on the same floor he was on: floor 16.

The air changed.  It was so slight, but noticeable only because of the stagnancy before.  There was a breeze.  He turned from the balcony and to the small dresser nearest him.  He stared at the copy of Fail-Safe by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler.  He couldn't make out the black concentric circles in this light.  The color of cover looked white in the wash of red neon.

"Automatically," from page 138, "[Grady] looked down at the Fail-Safe box which was installed between him and the bombadier.  For the first time in his flying career the bulb on top of the box was glowing red.  Then his intellect caught up with his reflexes: this was the real thing....He reached for the S.S.B. radio switch.  This would put him in direct contact with Omaha."

Burdick and Wheeler must have had an 'in' with some pilots.  The USAF only started using SSB maybe ten years ago, the book was written in '62.  HAM operators played with them before, a few were hired as contracted specialists, until the military engineers could get up to speed.  Lou knew part of its history: he had received his advanced training in single channel radio operations many moons ago.

Why did Bridge want him to read the book?  He nonchalantly handed over the Burdick book, then a Pynchon, a notebook and three hundred dollars.  He gave him a formula for blackjack and told him not to push it.  Lou couldn't help but think they were all connected somehow.

Either way it made him forget the young lady.  He drew the curtains and marked the sound of cars had all but died away.  The shooting star of the Mint looked like an asterisk through the dark of curtain.

He hit the bed and made a mental note of the 3200 in cash that he had wadded up into his shoe.  He made a recall that he had latched the door.  He hoped he would sleep enough of the hours before the stark sun of July pierced the room soon.

...wandering the night, on Twitter...13apr14...

Pitching the series of #night photos I've been putting on Twitter the last several weeks.  Enjoying the nightly strolls around and everywhere.  More to come the next two days from Vegas and Temecula.